Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Having built a successful payments processor and sold it to Global Payments Inc., Bob Carr is ready to build another company, but this time with a purpose beyond simply making money. Carr’s latest endeavor is Beyond, launched May 1, just over a year from the closing of Global Payments’ $4.3 …

• Visa Inc. said its April 2019 date for compliance with 3-D Secure 2.0, an online-commerce fraud-prevention standard, applies globally. In 2016, Visa had said compliance would start with Europe in April 2018. “We felt it was easier for our various stakeholders to have a single global date, so we aligned Europe accordingly,” …

Ever since Apple Inc. raised the profile of mobile wallets with its launch of Apple Pay in 2014, observers have questioned how widely consumers would take up the newfangled payment gadgets. The latest study shows that while adoption is widespread, it has stalled in recent months. The good news for …

Today, Canadian businesses and financial institutions employ several different standards or “languages” to make and receive payments across systems, financial markets and borders. Payments are also lacking valuable data, such as invoice or remittance information – which is key to automated processing and electronic payments. To mitigate these issues, labor-intensive …

First Data Corp. reported Monday that transaction volume in its North American merchant-acquiring business grew 7% year-over-year in the first quarter to 11.5 billion. Attrition in First Data’s direct small and mid-sized (SMB) merchant business, which had been a problem for more than a year, improved, but sales leads from …

• Visa Inc. announced that its 3-D Secure 2.0 program will begin in April 2019. 3-D Secure 2.0 is a measure managed by EMVCo that shares e-commerce transaction data between merchants and issuers in an effort to thwart fraudulent transactions and approve valid ones. EMVCo released the updated spec in October 2016. • Visa said grocer …

• Repeal of the Durbin Amendment took a step closer to reality with the passage of the Financial Choice Act by the House Financial Services Committee by a 34-26 vote. The full House is expected to take up the bill by the end of the month. • MoneyGram International Inc. said …

• Two executives of Commerce Payment Systems, which had been a Hewlett, N.Y.-based independent sales organization, have been charged in a $30 million scheme that overbilled more than 10,000 merchants, announced the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York this week following the unsealing of an indictment. The charges …

Online merchants looking to increase their sales volume may want to consider offering instant financing. A study by Researchscape International reveals that 75% of respondents would be more likely to purchase from an online retailer that offers instant financing than one that does not. Another 28% said they would be …

Shares of payment card manufacturer CPI Card Group Inc. dropped almost 17% Thursday in the wake of slipping EMV chip card sales, falling revenues, and a net loss in the first quarter. The Littleton, Colo.-based firm said quarterly net sales declined 35% year-over-year to $56 million. Product net sales plunged …

Paying for fuel at an Exxon Mobil Corp. gas station just got even easier. That is, for those who use the ExxonMobil Speedpass+ mobile app and drive a Ford vehicle with SYNC3 technology or use Apple Inc.’s Apple Watch. Speedpass+, which also is available for Android devices and offers Samsung …

Criminals purchasing stolen credit card data know they have a short window of opportunity to cash in before the accounts are shut down. Manually sifting through the hundreds, even thousands, of accounts bought in bulk can take more time than criminals have, which is why they are increasingly relying on …

Fleetcor Technologies Inc., a big provider of fleet-fueling, payroll payments, and gift card services, said it has a definitive agreement to acquire Cambridge Global Payments, a Toronto-based processor of cross-border business-to-business payments that handles $20 billion annually in vendor and employee payments for 13,000 companies. The purchase price is C$900 …

• Apple Inc., in its results for the second quarter ending April 1, said Apple Pay is available now in 15 markets, having launched in Taiwan and Ireland in March. Globally, that includes 20 million contactless-ready locations, of which 4.5 million are in the United States, said chief executive Tim Cook during …

In-store shopping isn’t going anywhere. That’s the finding of a survey from online processor Adyen. That’s especially true for pre- and post-purchase needs. And it’s just one sign of how much more demanding consumers are becoming when it comes to payments and related transactions. Eighty-six percent of consumers want to …

The numbers moved in the right direction for Square Inc. in the first quarter, with gross payment volume up 33% and profitability measures improving. But an analyst urged the merchant acquirer to disclose more data about its fast-growing but potentially volatile loan business called Square Capital. San Francisco-based Square reported Wednesday …

Call centers remain a prime target for criminals looking to perpetrate fraud. In 2016, call-center fraud jumped 113% from 2015, according to Atlanta-based Pindrop Labs’ annual Call Center Fraud Report. Fraudulent activity took place with one in every 937 call-center calls, compared to one in 2,000 calls in 2015“With tools …

Mastercard Inc. reported Tuesday that it switched nearly 17% more transactions in the first quarter than it did a year earlier. Most of the growth came from overseas, but some of it resulted from more U.S. PIN-debit volume, company executives said. Purchase, N.Y.-based Mastercard said it switched 14.7 billion transactions …

• Processing giant First Data Corp. and cross-border payments specialist Flywire Corp. announced a collaboration by which Flywire education and health-care clients will be able to more easily accept cross-border card payments and First Data clients will be able to more readily accept high-value international remittances. • Gro Solutions, a vendor of digital solutions …

Savvy execs look beyond payment processing for earnings growth. Text Receipts are a natural starting point. Credit card processing has long been a commodity business in the United States. Just as in other markets, large merchants have unbeatable pricing and it’s the small and medium sized businesses, or “SMBs”, who …