Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews HEI Hotels & Resorts disclosed Friday that malware on point-of-sale systems may have captured payment card information at restaurants and other locations within 20 of its properties. At the same time, the payments industry is watching for clues about the extent of a compromise at Oracle Corp.’s …

• Mobile point-of-sale service provider Cardflight announced that processor BluePay Processing LLC is now offering the Cardflight SwipeSimple service to merchants. • Revel Systems, provider of iPad-based point-of-sale technology, and Intuit Inc. expanded an existing partnership to bring Intuit QuickBooks Point of Sale services to salon and grocery retailers. The …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews When Intuit Inc. launched QuickBooks Point of Sale with tablet-payments specialist Smoothie King Franchises Inc., a chain of 700 juice outlets, to install Revel tablets chainwide in what at the time was the largest such deal on record. Earlier this month, news emerged that IBM Corp. …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews No bones about it, adding EMV payment card acceptance to point-of-sale systems has been a challenge for retailers. Seventy-six percent of them, in the inaugural “State of Retail Payments 2016” study, said EMV implementation was their top challenge in the past 12 months. Other top challenges from …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews The debate over the price merchants pay to accept credit cards may be about to intensify. A new report suggests that capping credit card interchange at 22 cents plus 30.5 basis points per transaction could cut $15 billion from the current total of $33 billion U.S. merchants …

• A variety of financial-services firms, including MasterCard Inc., SWIFT, and Visa Inc., participated in a 130-page report released Friday by the World Economic Forum that concludes “distributed-ledger technology will form the foundation of next-generation financial services infrastructure in conjunction with other existing and emerging technologies.” • M&T Bank announced …

By John Stewart@DTPaymentNews The U.S. EMV transition that began in earnest last October has brought with it a lot of pain, but few issues have been more agonizing for merchants than the flood of chargebacks they’re seeing for the first time. Now estimates are emerging that begin to quantify that …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews Visa Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. say there is no news in their standoff that began July 18 with Wal-Mart kicking Visa out of its three stores in Thunder Bay, Ontario. But Visa over the past several weeks has run a marketing campaign to remind residents of …

Slowly but surely, the big merchants that make up the stalled Merchant Customer Exchange LLC retailer consortium are finding their own way in mobile payments. The latest example is MCX stalwart CVS Health Corp., which on Thursday announced the launch of its CVS Pay mobile wallet. The Woonsocket, R.I.-based chain …

• With sales of EMV payment cards to U.S. credit and debit card issuers down 55% year over year in the second quarter, card producer CPI Card Group Inc. reported that total sales fell 23% to $73.7 million. Due in part to litigation expenses, CPI booked a net loss from …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews Mobile-wallet adoption might get a boost through the rest of 2016 as 29% of consumers expect to use a mobile wallet like Apple Pay, Android Pay, or Samsung Pay before the end of the year, finds a survey from Computer Services Inc., a financial-technology company. Most—71%—had no …

• A status conference in the massive credit card interchange case known as MDL 1720 is set for Thursday in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, N.Y., in the wake of the $5.7 billion settlement in the case being overturned by an appellate court June 30. The case is returning to …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews Partly because of a big increase in skimming, debit card fraud rates jumped in 2015 on both signature and PIN-based point-of-sale transactions, according to the 2016 Debit Issuer Study commissioned by Discover Financial Services’ Pulse electronic funds transfer network. The overall fraud-loss rate on PIN POS transactions …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Chargebacks cost issuers millions every year just to investigate, let alone process, so technology companies see an opportunity in reversing the rising tide of cardholder inquiries financial institutions and merchants confront every day. The latest example is a service from financial-data aggregator Yodlee that adds information …

• The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and its Michigan State Disbursement unit are allowing parents who choose a cash option online for child-support payments to make the payments at 7-Eleven and Family Dollar stores, with processing handled by PayNearMe. The arrangement follows a similar venture in which PayNearMe …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews When Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. demonstrated their merchant frustration with lengthy certification logjams. The Quick Chip and M/Chip Fast code is available at no cost, and American Express Co. and Discover Financial Services are also offering variants of it. How many merchants will adopt the …

PayRange Inc., a specialist in contactless payments for vending machines, is making good on $12 million in funding it raised last year with a couple of contract announcements. Portland, Ore.-based PayRange said Monday the Canadian National Vending Alliance, a coalition of large vending operators in Canada, will equip all vending …

• The U.S. Marshals Service announced that bidder registration began today for its Aug. 22 online auction of 2,719.33 Bitcoins forfeited to the government in various criminal, civil, and administrative cases. The Bitcoins, which will be sold in one block, are worth nearly $1.61 million at today’s price of $590.25 …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews The notion of the federal government auctioning off Bitcoin seized in drug busts and other actions looks like it’s an idea with some staying power. The U.S. Marshals Service on Monday scheduled yet another auction of the virtual currency in the wake of the four it conducted …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews It’s no secret the U.S. point of sale is undergoing perhaps the most extensive overhaul in its long and storied history, but now there’s evidence that a crowd of technology startups are sharing in the bounty that sweeping modernization is generating. Point-of-sale startups will likely reap …