Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

By Kevin Woodward @DTPaymentNews Almost a year after the U.S. payment card industry adopted EMV chip cards for point-of-sale transactions, approximately 44% of U.S. merchants that accept credit and debit cards have EMV POS terminals. That assessment, in The Strawhecker Group’s latest EMV survey released Tuesday, is less than an …

• The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC selected IBM Corp.’s Power8 system for its real-time payments service, expected to go live next year. The IBM system will run software from VocaLink Holdings Ltd., which TCH selected last year as a vendor for its project. VocaLink is being acquired by MasterCard …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews Visa Inc. plans to phase out static passwords used with its Verified by Visa e-commerce fraud-control service beginning in April 2018. Visa’s announcement precedes even more changes coming to Verified by Visa’s underlying technology called Three-Domain Secure, or 3-Secure. EMVCo, the chip card standards body owned by …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews Acquirers and processors have until Oct. 14 to prepare their systems for a new range of bank-identification numbers MasterCard Inc. intends to add to its inventory for issuers. Announced in 2014, the move is an attempt to stymie a possible exhaustion of BINs. These numbers are the …

MasterCard Inc. and Visa Inc. reported Monday that online-payments specialist Stripe Inc. is using their instant-payment services to pay merchants such as ride-sharing service Lyft and other users of Stripe’s marketplaces. Stripe actually began offering what it calls Instant Payouts relying on the network services—Mastercard Send and Visa Direct—to merchants as …

• Processor Fiserv Inc. said a new scoring model for its Payment Fraud Manager service designed specifically for automated clearing house transactions detected more than 90% of fraud while reviewing only 2% of the transactions in model validation tests. • Payment gateway Network Merchants LLC announced its SwIPe EMV chip …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews With more than 3 million renters enrolled in an online rent-payment service, Entrata Inc.’s desire to optimize its payment-card acceptance costs is paramount. That’s why Lehi, Utah-based Entrata is working with Visa Inc. on an improved payment and authorization program for the multifamily-housing industry. Announced Thursday, the …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews Merchants would like nothing more than to decipher what they call the “mysteries” of the payments universe, a select group of them told attendees Thursday at the Western States Acquirers Association conference in Scottsdale, Ariz. These mysteries, they said, include knowing whom to call when a problem …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Few things have thrown a spotlight on the 40-year-old chargeback process like the nation’s conversion to EMV chip cards at the point of sale, but it’s in online commerce where the problem has long plagued merchants. And now there’s evidence that these sellers may have more …

  By Tom McCole, Mobile Commerce Strategy, Infinite Peripherals, Inc. Space: the final frontier. Well maybe we’re not talking outer space yet, but in-flight travel for sure. Infinite Peripherals’ (IPC) mobile iOS handheld devices are simplifying multiple duties on many of Earth’s commercial aircraft and at airport terminals as well. …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews The dispute between Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Visa Inc. over payment card acceptance costs intensified Thursday when the retailer’s Walmart Canada unit announced that it will extend its ban on Visa credit card acceptance from Thunder Bay, Ontario, to its 16 stores in the province of Manitoba. …

• Ripple, a provider of distributed-ledger technology for financial transactions, has completed a $55 million Series B funding round. • In related news, Tipalti, which provides a platform to automate supplier payments, announced a $14 million funding round. • Time Inc. said it has integrated Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay to allow mobile …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews When it comes to actively testing sensitive data networks for problems, only 23% of companies consider themselves as “very proactive.” This finding from a new Osterman Research Inc. survey of 126 companies representing thousands of employees arrives as the onslaught of breaches and malware continues to wreak …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews With malware and hacker attacks on payment card-accepting devices increasing in sophistication, the PCI Security Standards Council has announced updated rules for protecting such devices. “The updates are designed to stay one step ahead of criminals who continue to develop new ways to steal credit and debit …

• JPMorgan Chase & Co. signed the Best Buy Co. Inc. electronics chain to accept the Chase Pay mobile app in its nearly 1,400 stores, on its site, and in-app. Chase Pay is live with some e-commerce merchants and is expected to become available in stores and in-app later in …

By Rick Oglesby Visa Inc. chief executive officer Charlie Scharf and MasterCard Inc. CEO Ajay Banga must be all smiles these days. PayPal Holdings Inc. CEO Dan Schulman was clearly motivated to make peace with

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews Two million U.S. merchants accept EMV chip cards at the checkout almost a year after the card brands made merchants also liable for counterfeit card use. That tally is a 468% increase from Oct. 1, 2015, the date of the liability shift, says MasterCard Inc., which provided …

• USA Technologies Inc., a provider of wireless payment services for vending machines and other unattended merchant locations, reported $169 million in purchase volume on its 429,000-location network in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2016 ended June 30, up 50% from a year earlier. Transaction volume hit 89 million, up …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews If you think the upcoming 2016 elections are only about The Donald versus Hillary, think again. A bill in the House of Representatives that would significantly alter the controversial Dodd-Frank Act and repeal its contentious Durbin Amendment passed the House Financial Services Committee Tuesday on a 30-26 …

• MasterCard Inc. issued its latest U.S. EMV progress report; the network says it has 2 million chip-active merchant locations and that 88% of MasterCard consumer credit cards now have chips. • Processor Elavon announced it is launching a tablet-based point-of-sale product in Canada in conjunction with talech, a POS …