Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews Point-of-sale terminal maker Ingenico Group is bringing its POS app store based on its Telium Tetra operating system to the United States this year, company officials tell Digital Transactions News. POS apps enable merchants to load and use business software than can help with employee scheduling, manage …

• Abilene Diagnostic Clinic has adopted the One Bill solution from health-care payments processor InstaMed, allowing patients to deal with a single statement embracing all ADC locations. • In related news, Change Healthcare, a specialist in analytics software, introduced Personalized Communications for its billing and payments solution. The new service is aimed at billing …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Big markets like the United States and China have been boosting EMV chip card shipments for years, but now those two growth engines are sputtering. Worldwide contactless EMV. Currently, most EMV cards in the U.S. market require users to insert the card into a chip reader …

• TouchSuite, a merchant-services company operated by American Bankcard LLC, announced it purchased Merchant Bankcard Systems of America, which has approximately 1,000 merchants in its portfolio. Terms of the deal, which closed Feb. 7, were not disclosed. • Middleware provider Datacap Systems Inc. said it completed level 3 EMV certification with …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews A year ago, Visa Inc. expanded its Visa Ready program beyond mobile point-of-sale terminals to support tokenized payments on a wide variety of Internet-connected devices. On Thursday, the payments company took the next step in that plan, announcing a collaboration with IBM Corp. that will allow …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews The lingering impact of some retailers’ slow conversion to EMV chip card acceptance continued to plague prepaid card services provider Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. in the fourth quarter. Blackhawk reported late Wednesday that revenues fell short of its expectations in part because of a “continued EMV headwind” …

• First Data Corp. expanded its deal with ShopKeep, a cloud-based point-of-sale provider, that makes ShopKeep’s POS software available through its distribution network. ShopKeep also will incorporate First Data’s payment processing and security tools. This includes the Clover Go software developer kit and enables ShopKeep software to operate on Clover hardware. • …

Small merchants that belong to the 109,000-member Canadian Federation of Independent Business will get interchange reductions of 12.5% or more on Mastercard purchases beginning April 3 under a deal announced Thursday by the CFIB and Mastercard Inc. The new rates will be available to CFIB members through all Canadian merchant …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews ATM manufacturer NCR Corp. on Tuesday unveiled its line of SelfServ 80 Series, machines NCR says are designed for “today’s mobile-first, omni-channel consumers.” The line currently has 4 models, and several large banks and mid-sized credit unions have already begun deploying them. “There are in the thousands …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews PayPal Holdings Inc., which hasn’t been shy about laying out big money to enter new businesses, said on Tuesday it will shell out $233 million to buy TIO Networks Corp., a cloud-based processor that will deepen PayPal’s penetration of the bill-payment market. The acquisition is expected …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews Merchant-services provider Cayan released a semi-integrated mobile-payment device that accepts EMV chip card payments, the Boston-based company announced Tuesday. Dubbed Genius Handheld, the device enables clerks to accept multiple forms of payment while standing in a store aisle or at a popup location to shorten checkout queues. …

• E-commerce platform provider Shopify Inc. said it added 133,000 merchants in 2016, bringing the total to 377,500 by year’s end; gross merchandise volume hit $5.5 billion in the fourth quarter, up 94% from a year earlier. Shopify also says that since it launched Apple Pay for the Web, more than …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Brick-and-mortar retailers are struggling to keep up with online stores, but they’d struggle far less if they could better deploy in-store technology, according to a report issued Tuesday. A big issue for shoppers is lackluster customer service, which last year cost retailers $150 billion in lost …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews How enthusiastic are consumers about shopping on their smart phones and tablets? Enough that mobile commerce grew to $22.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2016, up 45% from $15.6 billion in the same period a year prior, says comScore Inc., a Reston, Va.-based data-measurement firm. That …

Diebold Nixdorf, the ATM manufacturer formed last August when North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold Inc. bought Germany’s Wincor Nixdorf AG, on Tuesday reported results for its first full quarter as a combined company. The merged firm, double the size of the former Diebold Inc., is now looking to expand globally and …

• Merchant processor iPayment Inc. will offer business services to its client base from cloud-based provider Company.com under a new agreement between the companies. • Merchant processor Fidelity Payment Services has selected PAX Technology as its preferred provider of EMV terminals and PIN pads. • Virtual Piggy Inc. announced it is working with …

Leading payment processor First Data Corp. on Monday reported positive net income for the fourth quarter and all of 2016, a turnaround from losses for both periods a year earlier, but it’s still working to improve mediocre revenue growth in its merchant-acquiring business. Atlanta-based First Data posted net income of …

• Canada-based RDM Corp., a maker of point-of-sale check scanners and developer of remote deposit capture software, has agreed to be acquired by check printer Deluxe Corp. for approximately $70 million U.S. in cash. • TA Associates, a private-equity firm, announced an investment in Retriever Medical/Dental Payments LLC, a payments provider for …

• PayPal Holdings Inc. reported in a filing that it has received subpoenas from the U.S. Department of Justice “seeking the production of certain information related to our historical anti-money laundering program.” PayPal said it is cooperating with the DoJ and cannot predict the outcome of the government’s investigation. • A point-of-sale software …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews For more than six years, most of the debate about the Dodd-Frank Act’s Durbin Amendment has been relatively straightforward. Merchants like Durbin because they pay less in debit card acceptance costs under the amendment’s interchange price cap affecting card issuers with more than $10 billion in assets. …