Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

  The U.S. payments industry’s transition to EMV chip cards has produced a number of side issues, but few may be more pressing for card-not-present merchants than the failed authorizations caused by the ongoing replacement of as many as 1.6 billion credit and debit cards. The new EMV cards carry …

• In-store mobile payments made with wallets enabled with near-field communication will total nearly $240 billion worldwide by 2021 as mobile-wallet competition intensifies and the contactless-payment infrastructure matures, predicts researcher Strategy Analytics. • Closed-loop gift card provider SVM LP acquired 1to1 Card, a prepaid card management-services firm for incentive, loyalty and …

Multilane retailers provided much of the revenue lift that payment-acceptance hardware and software provider VeriFone Systems Inc. has enjoyed for the past couple of years as the U.S. prepped for the Oct. 1, 2015, EMV liability shift, but many of the big retailers have now completed their EMV purchases. Yet …

• The nation’s movement toward faster payments took a step forward with Early Warning LLC’s announcement that it is now processing real-time peer-to-peer payments for Bank of America Corp. and U.S. Bancorp. Customers of these banks can send payments via mobile or online banking apps to other customers of either …

Some two-and-a-half years after it started, the Federal Reserve’s project to make U.S. payments faster and more secure is laying the groundwork for private industry to come up with something better than the mishmash that U.S. payments are today, but tangible results still could be years away. Fed officials and others …

The liability shift by which merchants not prepared to accept EMV chip cards now must bear responsibility for counterfeit card fraud has given rise to a federal antitrust lawsuit seeking class-action status for merchants. The 47-page complaint, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, comes …

Processor Square Inc. expects its strategy of providing what it calls a “cohesive” set of services to merchants will aid its efforts to reach profitability, the company reported Wednesday in its first-ever earnings result since becoming a publicly-traded company. It reported earnings for the fourth quarter and all of 2015. …

With an eye to easing the integration of EMV payment acceptance in mobile apps used for card-present transactions, mobile point-of-sale provider CardFlight now offers integration with Stripe, a payments provider specializing in online transactions. Developers can use the CardFlight software development kit and gateway to add EMV acceptance to apps …

• Processor Jack Henry & Associates Inc. said its JHA Payment Solutions unit will hook into the The Clearing House Payment Co.’s pending real-time payment system, which could bring 6,300 banks and credit unions served by Jack Henry into the new network. • Digital Check Corp. launched two products this …

There’s nothing new about identifying e-commerce customers through the device they use, but now the proliferation of mobile devices has data scientists hatching new ways to thwart fraudsters. One way authenticates users through not-so-obvious links between the many devices they may rely on day-to-day. The other takes a close look …

Apple Pay has pulled up to the fuel pump at ExxonMobil Corp. gas stations with the release Tuesday of Speedpass+, an iOS app that enables consumers to use Apple Inc.’s mobile-payment service to pay for gas within the app. The app also is available for Android devices. It also works …

The automated clearing house network’s strong growth run continued in 2015’s fourth quarter, exceeding 5% for the fourth quarter in a row. ACH governing body NACHA recently reported that total network volume hit 4.98 billion transactions, up 5.5% from 4.72 billion in 2014’s fourth quarter. While strong, the growth rate …

• On Track Innovations Ltd. launched its “My Chip Buddy” marketing effort to support the company’s newly introduced PayEnable platform, which allows manufacturers and designers to build payments capability into their products using near-field communication (NFC) technology. • Grocer The Kroger Co. says chargebacks related to its EMV rollout contributed …

  Nothing like an unexpected chargeback to turn a recalcitrant merchant into an EMV believer. According to new survey results from Javelin Strategy and Research, only 8% of small and so-called micro businesses queried in February who didn’t accept EMV chip cards cited as a reason the lack of a …

• Four directors of cash-strapped Powa Technologies Ltd., including the startup’s founder and chief executive, Dan Wagner, were ousted from the board as long ago as Feb. 19, according to a report on BusinessInsider.com. The news follows the development on Thursday in which accounting firm Deloitte, appointed as administrator of …

  Hiccups in the U.S. payment card industry’s monumental shift to EMV chip card technology are beginning to surface, and one problematic area is chargebacks among card-present merchants. That’s the observation from one large merchant-services provider, and it’s corroborated by a recent report from First Annapolis Consulting Inc. containing similar …

  With its enforcement action against Dwolla Inc., announced on Wednesday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau made plain it is expanding its writ to include data-security practices and putting digital-payments startups in its cross-hairs. The ripple effect could reach a number of payments providers if they are incautious about data …

Payment with a wearable device, such as a smart watch, wristband, or fitness monitor, has the potential to be used by 45% of wearables-owning consumers by 2020, finds the IHS “Wearable Payment Devices Report—2016” issued Wednesday. In four years, the global market for wearables will reach 340 million devices shipped, …

While the mobile wallets launched by corporate giants Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit, and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. have sparked a good deal of publicity, not much is known about actual adoption and usage so far, since the companies have been characteristically tightlipped. But that doesn’t mean researchers who …

MasterCard Inc. reportedly wants to acquire VocaLink Ltd., operator of the United Kingdom’s Faster Payments system, for just under £1 billion ($1.4 billion), according to reports in the British media Thursday. Such a deal, if consummated, could shake up the budding faster-payments movement in the U.S., where VocaLink is building …