Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews No doubt, the U.S. payment card industry’s monumental shift to EMV chip cards is earnestly moving ahead. A year later—Saturday marks the anniversary of the liability shift—some 2 million merchants accept the cards and card brands count millions of chip-enabled cards in use. The United States became …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews With Citigroup Inc.’s decision to join the network, the bank-controlled clearXchange person-to-person payments service has dramatically expanded its reach at a crucial time—just as it faces increasing competition from nonbank P2P rivals and in advance of a major rebranding set to take effect next year. The …

• The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to a New York state law barring retailers from imposing credit card surcharges, Reuters reported. A federal appellate court upheld the law a year ago; nine other states have similar laws. • Online business lender Merchant Advance Capital said it …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Payments networks face a competitive landscape marked by rapid innovation, so the two biggest systems, Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc., are responding by increasing the access developers have to their once tightly guarded skunk works. The latest move comes Wednesday from MasterCard, which announced MasterCard Developers. …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews As mobile wallets rapidly evolve, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. late Tuesday put out a birthday card of sorts reminding the world that its Samsung Pay service is now a year old in the United States. In that time, Samsung Pay has added payment-card issuing partners, but the …

• Payments processor Vantiv Inc. said its eProtect payment-security service now works with Android Pay. Vantiv also announced its validated point-to-point encryption service now includes VeriFone Systems Inc. point-of-sale equipment. • PayPal Holdings Inc. said consumers now can make PayPal payments using PayLease, a payments and billing platform for property …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews A federal appeals court on Monday handed American Express Co. a signal victory in the age-old battle with merchants over card-acceptance costs, but in doing so it may also have bolstered the card giant in its efforts to set and enforce merchant pricing. The U.S. Court …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews E-commerce fraud, the bane of online retailers and payments providers, is not only on the rise, certain U.S. locations seem more prone to this deceit than others. That’s according to a recent report from Experian plc. Data-specialist Experian says the riskiest ZIP code for shipping-address fraud is …

• Processor Fiserv Inc. said ATM services provider FCTI Inc., a U.S. affiliate of convenience-store giant 7-Eleven Inc.’s Japan-based parent company, picked it to provide transaction processing for 7-Eleven’s nearly 8,000 U.S. ATMs when FCTI takes over the portfolio next July from Cardtronics plc. • Payment technology provider ACI Worldwide …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews Apple Pay’s latest incarnation—enabling one-click payments for mobile and desktop Web-site purchasing—deftly brings the familiarity of such payments to Apple Pay users and merchants. At least, that’s my take on it, having used it last week when the service was released as part of an Apple Inc. …

In a break from the practice of most EMV chip card issuers, TCF National Bank reported this month that it will be issuing all of its customers’ debit cards with both contact and contactless capabilities. The bank, the principal subsidiary of Wayzata, Minn.-based TCF Financial Corp., said it will begin …

• E-commerce marketplace Rakuten.com will allow merchants outside the United States to sell to U.S. customers and collect payments in their local currency through a new arrangement with processor Payoneer. • First National Bank of Pennsylvania added a feature called CardGuard to its mobile-banking app that lets users turn their …

• Avidia Bank announced it is offering same-day ACH payments using technology supplied by linked2pay, a payments-technology company. • Fuel-pump manufacturer and convenience-store technology provider Gilbarco Veeder-Root said Colbea Inc., which does business as Seasons Corner Market, is installing Gilbarco’s Passport Point of Sale system to handle EMV chip card payments …

By John Stewart@DTPaymentNews Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s deal with JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s ChaseNet processing network, announced Thursday morning, proves that the nation’s biggest retailer can make peace with the big card brands if the terms are right. And it may indicate bigger prospects for Chase’s ambitious merchant-acquiring operation. Under the …

• U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch is expected to announce a crackdown on a global mail-fraud scheme that allegedly stole millions of dollars from elderly victims, CNNMoney reported. At the center of the investigation is an Canadian processor named PacNet Services Ltd. that reportedly deposited many of the victims’ checks. …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews The PCI Security Standards Council is now a decade old, and as it concludes its annual North America community meeting in Las Vegas Thursday it faces a payments-security landscape vastly changed from the one it confronted 10 years ago, with mobile payments, tokenization, and so-called fin-tech startups …

By John Stewart@DTPaymentNews Same-day processing starts Friday on the nation’s automated clearing house network, and months of preparation and planning appear to be paying off.  “Everybody is heads-down getting it done. We haven’t been getting any SOS calls,” Jane Larimer, executive vice president of network services at NACHA, the governing …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Companies that have been planning for months for the arrival Friday of same-day automated clearing house payments are getting ready to pounce, and one of the first opportunities lies in platform payouts. Des Moines, Iowa-based Dwolla Inc., for example, on Wednesday is announcing a new feature …

• The total value of contactless transactions worldwide will reach nearly $500 billion next year, up fully 56% from an estimated $321 billion in 2016, according to Juniper Research. • Samsung Electronics America Inc. said more than 500,000 replacement Galaxy Note7 phablets have arrived in the U.S. and will be available …

Apple Pay has brought the one-click simplicity of its mobile-payments service to the desktop and mobile browsers. Apple Inc. on Tuesday released an update for Apple computers that enables consumers to pay using its Apple Pay mobile wallet on participating Web sites, such as Lululemon.com and Apple.com, but only when …