Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Private-label card issuer Synchrony Financial and PayPal Holdings Inc. have expanded their credit agreements. Announced Wednesday, the deal sees Stamford, Conn.-based Synchrony Financial become the exclusive provider for PayPal Credit, the payment company’s U.S. online consumer financial program, and extends an existing co-branded consumer credit card issued by Synchrony Financial, …

In the latest example of the growing market for cross-border payments using blockchain technology, American Express Co. announced Thursday that business customers of its FX International Payments (FXIP) service can now use Ripple Labs Inc.’s blockchain-based RippleNet network for payments between the United States and the United Kingdom. The two …

Point-of-sale services provider National Retail Solutions announced wholesale grocery distributor Pitco Foods is selling NRS POS terminals in its four warehouse stores. A court ordered PayPal Holdings Inc. to give the Canada Revenue Agency, the country’s national taxing authority, information about Canadians with PayPal business accounts who sent or received …

Richard Cordray, the only person so far to serve as director of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, announced Wednesday that he will resign by month’s end. The widely anticipated move casts uncertainty over the CFPB’s future, including its policies on electronic payments. “For President Trump, it will be yet …

Online marketplace eBay Inc. will add business-to-business gift cards from Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. to its roster of products, Blackhawk announced Wednesday. The expansion—Blackhawk already provides other gift card services to eBay—will help the marketplace with its B2B sales, Blackhawk says. Now, businesses can order eBay gift cards to reward …

For the last four years, Square Cash has been a popular person-to-person payment app, but now Square Inc. is adding another function: buying and selling Bitcoin. The San Francisco payments company is testing the new feature with an undisclosed number of Square Cash users, according to the company and users’ …

Unless there is a potential fraud issue or customer dispute, very few of the trillions of transactions that cross U.S. electronic payment networks annually attract any attention. But the first transaction on The Clearing House’s new real-time payments system was so different that BNY Mellon, the bank originator, invoked the …

Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since 2011, is resigning, according to a report on TheHill.com, a political news site. The CFPB’s only director since it was created, Cordray expects to leave the agency by the end of the month, the site said. Fashion retailer Forever 21 Inc. said it …

The Clearing House’s much-anticipated real-time payments system, dubbed RTP, went live late Monday afternoon, ushering in a new era of faster electronic payments in the United States. The transaction between The Bank of New York Mellon Corp.’s BNY Mellon subsidiary and U.S. Bancorp’s U.S. Bank was completed at 4:59:40 p.m. …

Chatbots, quick-response codes, and so-called invisible payments will spur digital-coupon redemption volume to $91 billion worldwide by 2022, forecasts Juniper Research Ltd. These three technologies will propel redemption as consumers increasingly become accustomed to them, says the United Kingdom-based research firm. For example, chatbots, a form of machine learning that …

Observers who wondered not long ago whether Bitcoin was too valuable to be a payment method may now be wondering whether it’s too volatile. The cryptocurrency has soared all year, reaching a peak near $7,800 only six days ago, but then it crashed hard, shedding about $2,000 in value by …

ShopKeep, a provider of tablet-based point-of-sale equipment and services, announced an integration with online-information management service Yext Inc. The integration will allow ShopKeep clients to check and modify information about their businesses across platforms like Google, Apple, Facebook, Bing, and Yahoo. Point-of-sale terminal maker Ingenico Group released the Moby/8500 mobile …

More younger consumers than older ones prefer using debit cards for online shopping, finds the “Holiday Shopping Consumer Survey Results” released by Vantiv Inc. In the survey of more than 1,000 consumers, 32% of Millennials and 27% of Generation X said using a debit card was their preferred online-shopping method. …

Visa Inc. announced Monday that it has created a business unit dedicated to transit payments. The new unit debuts as public transportation agencies worldwide move away from cash and proprietary magnetic-stripe fare cards and begin accepting mobile wallets and contactless general-purpose credit and debit cards. Dubbed Visa Global Transit Solutions, …

PayPal Holdings Inc.’s planned integration of its TIO Networks bill-pay operation hit a major snag late Friday when PayPal said it had shut down TIO’s system after the discovery of a security issue. Neither PayPal nor TIO released details about the issue. In a statement, PayPal said it involves “security …

Mobile-wallet developer CardFree Inc. said it has paired with loyalty-solutions vendor Hatch Loyalty to target gas stations and convenience stores for order-ahead, stored-value, and loyalty services. Miami-based Bitcoin broker Bitstop expanded to California with the deployment of five Bitcoin ATMs in Los Angeles and four in Oakland; the company also …

As in the United States, Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. dominate card payments in Europe, but now the two U.S.-based card brands are growing on that continent partly at the expense of smaller brands they own. European issuers are systematically switching Visa Electron and Mastercard Maestro cards to simply Visa …

Private-equity firm Thoma Bravo LLC announced it plans to acquire ABC Financial Services Inc., an independent sales organization and software company serving more than 6,700 health clubs in North America and Europe. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close by year’s end, were not disclosed. Morgan Stanley Wealth …

It’s not a pretty picture, but then anything detailing the proliferation of cybercrime isn’t likely to have a bright side. ThreatMetrix Inc., in its “2017 Q3 Cybercrime Report,” says it detected and stopped 171 million attacks in the third quarter, a 100% increase from the 2015 third quarter. The report, …

Backers of the so-called SegWit2x proposal to double block size for Bitcoin suspended the effort on Wednesday, citing a lack of “consensus for a clean blocksize upgrade.” The move, which would have occurred around Nov. 16, was an effort to increase transaction capacity for Bitcoin and relieve upward pressure on …