Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Unlike its rivals Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc., American Express Inc. depends crucially on revenue from the fees it charges merchants for acceptance. These fees, in fact, account for 57% of the company’s overall revenues net of interest expense. So it came as no surprise that AmEx’s top brass spent …

Bank of America Corp. this week said fourth-quarter purchase volume on its debit cards rose 6% year over year to $77.9 billion. Debit card purchases for all of 2017 totaled $298.6 billion, up 5% from $285.6 billion in 2016. BofA claimed 24.2 million active mobile-banking customers at year’s end, up …

The PCI Security Standards Council on Thursday unveiled its Associate Qualified Security Assessor program aimed at reducing a shortage of data-security professionals in the payments industry. The Wakefield, Mass.-based PCI Council certifies QSA companies to perform assessments of a firm’s compliance with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard, the main …

Visa Inc. CEO Alfred Kelly told CNBC that Bitcoin currently is a “speculative commodity” and not “a payment-system player.” Visa only will process fiat currency transactions, Kelly said at the National Retail Federation’s annual conference this week in New York. Varo Money Inc. said it raised $45 million in a …

With the merger between Vantiv Inc. and Worldpay plc finalized, the combined organization, known as Worldpay Inc., will get to the tasks at hand, says Shane Happach, Worldpay executive vice president and head of its global enterprise e-commerce. Chief among them will be developing its technology and growing the company, …

Flywire Corp., which since its start in 2011 has focused on international payments, on Thursday announced it has acquired OnPlan Holdings LLC, a Bannockburn, Ill.-based company that specializes in payments and receivables management for the health-care and education markets. Financial terms were not announced. OnPlan, with its units OnPlanHealth and …

Mobile remote deposit capture transactions jumped 35% in 2017 over the previous year thanks to an increase in users, a software firm specializing in digital-banking applications for community banks and credit unions reports. “For banks and credit unions live for all of 2017, mobile deposits grew by an average of …

Financial-services providers experienced a 105% increase in the fraudster attack rate from 2015 through 2017, reports ThreatMetrix Inc., an authentication and fraud-mitigation provider, in its “Cybercrime Report 2017: A Year in Review,” released on Tuesday. E-commerce merchants, too, experienced greater fraud, with the log-in attack rate growing by 170% from …

In what may be a case of easy come, easy go, Bitcoin and more than a score of other cryptocurrencies are shedding value fast. Since peaking near $20,000 on Dec. 17, Bitcoin’s price has plummeted more than 50%. It stood at $9,650 at mid-morning Wednesday, down more than $2,000 in …

Cardlytics Inc., which analyzed 18 billion U.S. purchases in 2016 from customers of more than 1,600 financial institutions, last week filed for an initial public offering of stock that it hopes will raise $75 million in gross proceeds to further expand its marketing platforms. Atlanta-based Cardlytics was founded in 2008 …

A bipartisan group of 18 state attorneys general sent a letter to Congress asking lawmakers to advance legislation “that would allow states that have legalized medical or relational use of marijuana to bring that commerce into the banking system.” Marijuana remains illegal under federal law, forcing many legal cannabis businesses in 29 …

Gift and prepaid card services provider Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. reported Tuesday that it has a deal with two financial firms to be taken private for $3.5 billion. Private-equity firm Silver Lake Management L.L.C. and hedge fund P2 Capital Partners are offering $45.25 per share in cash. The offer represents …

Vantiv Inc.’s acquisition of Worldpay Group plc, which was announced in August, officially closed Tuesday, forming a company called Worldpay Inc. The combined company processes more than 40 billion transactions worth more than $1.5 trillion annually around the world. Over a 24-hour period, a swooning Bitcoin shed nearly $2,600 in …

When major technology companies started launching mobile-payments services a few years ago, many observers figured digitized and tokenized card credentials would soon replace old-fashioned plastic. But now, the chronically sluggish adoption and usage rates these mobile wallets have registered is lending new life to plastic cards. The twist is that …

Lighthouse Network, the company behind such acquiring and point-of-sale brands as Harbortouch and POSitouch, announced Monday it has purchased Shift4 Corp., a Las Vegas-based payment gateway, for an undisclosed amount. Allentown, Pa.-based Lighthouse also announced it would adopt the Shift4 name, rebranding itself as Shift4 Payments. It was only in …

Cardlytics Inc., which provides marketers with payment card purchase information as well as ACH and bill-payment data from 2,000 partner financial institutions, filed for a $75 million initial public offering. Cardlytics says that in 2016 its platform analyzed more than 18 billion online and in-store transactions across more than 94 million accounts, …

Zelle on Saturday was set to run the first spots in its initial national mass-media marketing campaign, which is centered on the Tony and Grammy Award-winning actor and rapper Daveed Diggs in an effort to appeal to what the bank-controlled person-to-person payments service calls the “mobile majority” of consumers. The …

Visa Inc.’s announcement Friday that it will make signature authentication optional for EMV contact and contactless transactions in North America starting in April might provide another boost for merchants who have yet to adopt chip-card acceptance, suggests an analyst. Signatures remain a requirement for Visa magnetic stripe-based transactions not subject to …

Visa Inc. is joining the other three card brands in making signatures optional for many of its transactions beginning in April. The card brand, which had credit card volume of $499 billion and debit volume of $388 billion in its fourth quarter ended Sept. 30, says in a blog post published …

Same-day processing for both credits and debits on the automated clearing house network finished its first full quarter on Dec. 31, and numbers released Thursday show a solid increase in volume and dollars. In particular, same-day debits, introduced Sept. 15 , are growing fast and finished the final quarter accounting for …