Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Fitbit introduced its first smart watch, the Ionic, which features contactless-payment capability. Over the coming months users can add tokenized American Express Co. cards as well as Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. credit and debit cards from certain banks around the world, including Bank of America, Capital One, HSBC, and U.S. Bank in the United States, …

After chastising the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for way it handled itself in its 2015 lawsuit against allegedly fraudulent debt collectors and their payment processors, a federal judge on Friday threw out the CFPB’s claims against the processors. The case is unusual in that Judge Richard W. Story of U.S. …

So far, most observers would agree same-day ACH credit processing, introduced nearly a year ago on the nation’s automated clearing house network, has been a success. Users appear to be satisfied with the service, and risk appears to be under control, observers say, despite the shorter windows for fraud detection. …

Independent sales organization BluePay Processing LLC acquired Security Card Services, a merchant-services provider for community and regional banks. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Canadian mobile-payments provider Dream Payments has expanded a dealer program whereby wireless and electronics distributors sell the company’s mobile point-of-sale terminal in-store and online. Currently, more than 100 retailers …

Now that financial institutions have launched a digital peer-to-peer payment service called Zelle to battle popular nonbank services like Venmo, the rival platforms are likely to divide up a rapidly growing market but will also face pressure to find ways to charge for the service. While overall U.S. P2P dollar …

Square Inc. opened a store in New York City on Thursday to showcase its products and highlight products from some of its merchants, marking the digital-payments company’s first effort at running its own brick-and-mortar shop. Dubbed the Square Showroom, the lower Manhattan location has displays of various Square point-of-sale products …

The pending sale by American Express Co. of its Serve technology platform to prepaid card program manager InComm moves AmEx more toward the model used by most other general-purpose prepaid card issuers and still keeps the upscale AmEx brand involved in a business mostly oriented toward moderate- and lower-income consumers, …

With the blessing of the Federal Trade Commission and Whole Foods Market Inc. shareholders, Amazon.com Inc. on Wednesday cleared the last significant hurdles in the way of its $13.7 billion deal to acquire the Austin, Texas-based chain of some 470 grocery stores. The deal, which was announced in June and …

So-called native automated clearing house payments that originate electronically rather than by conversion of a paper check continued their robust growth in the second quarter while same-day ACH transaction volume hit $16.6 billion, reports ACH governing body NACHA—The Electronic Payments Association.  In total, the ACH network transferred 5.35 billion payments, …

Bridg Inc., a marketing software company for the restaurant industry, said Thursday that it lined up $11 million in series B funding from Visa Inc. and private-equity firms Morpheus Ventures, NextEquity Partners, and March Capital. Specific investment amounts made by each company were not disclosed. Los Angeles-based Bridg uses artificial …

American Express Co. says it disagrees with an opinion from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that differences in card products it offered in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Pacific Territories from cards it offered in the United States amounted to discrimination. AmEx says it resolved the differences in 2013 after …

QualPay, a provider of cloud-based, integrated-payments solutions, launched a developer portal allowing integrators to evaluate and deploy payment services. Person-to-person payments by users of services offered by community banks and credit unions average $450, compared to $25 for users of Venmo, a popular third-party app, according to data from Malauzai Software, …

USA Technologies Inc., a provider of payment services for vending machines and other unattended merchant locations, said Tuesday the number of connections in its ePort network grew 32% year-over-year to 568,000 as of June 30, and transaction volume nearly as much. The Malvern, Pa.-based firm also reported net income of …

It’s what some may consider a bold forecast for contactless payments in the United States, but Juniper Research is predicting that, by 2022, 34% of electronic payments will be contactless, up from less than 2% in 2017. United Kingdom-based Juniper released its forecast Monday in a report called “POS and …

Steven A. Rathgaber, who has been chief executive of ATM-networking firm Cardtronics plc since 2010, will retire at the end of the year and will be succeeded by Edward H. West, currently chief financial officer and chief operations officer, the company announced. Rathgaber came to Cardtronics from the NYCE electronic funds transfer …

The political coroner has made an official pronouncement: Operation Choke Point is dead. The controversial program begun in 2013 by the U.S. Department of Justice during the administration of President Barack Obama aimed to deny payment services to fraudulent telemarketers, payday lenders, and other suspect merchants. It generated massive controversy for …

A pioneering mobile-payment wallet for mass transit has reached a milestone. Chicago’s Ventra app has been downloaded more than 2 million times since it became available in November 2015, according to an announcement Monday from Cubic Transportation Systems, the San Diego-based company that developed the app. Commuters have bought almost …

Financial-services processor Fiserv Inc. announced it has acquired real-time payments provider Dovetail Group Ltd. Terms were not announced. Payments provider Spectrum Payments said it joined the National Rural Health Association as a pipeline partner, enabling it to offer merchant services to association members. Blockchain technology firm BTCS Inc. said it has signed a non-binding letter of intent …

A number of daunting challenges face the U.S. payments industry as it sets out to make speedier transactions available everywhere in the country within three years, according to a report released this week by Aite Group, a Boston-based consulting firm. Among these challenges are the absence of an industrywide mandate …

Tablet-based point-of-sale provider Revel Systems announced Thursday it will offer data-integration services from Dsync to its merchants. Australia-based Dsync provides systems-integration services that enable businesses to view disparate types of data in a single Web-based site. For example, Dsync says it can connect systems used to manage inventory, payments, e-commerce sites, …