Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Flint Mobile Inc., a startup whose app allowed merchants to process transactions by using their smart-phone camera to scan customers’ card numbers, abruptly ceased operations earlier this month and has arranged for merchants to switch over to Stripe for processing. That’s according to MerchantMaverick.com, a merchant-processing review site Flint, which …

Square Inc. introduced its payroll service for small businesses last June in California, and in the eight months since then Square Payroll has proven to be popular enough that the company added two more states in November and on Wednesday said it is expanding into five more. But while Square …

U.S. consumers apparently held onto and used their smart phones and tablets even more than one might suspect given the increase in mobile-commerce transactions during the fourth quarter of 2015, reports Criteo, a New York City-based online marketing specialist. In its “State of Mobile Commerce Report,” released Wednesday, Criteo said …

The PCI Securities Standards Council said Wednesday that the next iteration of the Payment Card Industry data-security standard will be coming in the first half of this year, probably in March or April, about six months earlier than called for in the current update cycle. The new version, dubbed PCI …

With biometric authentication now enabled in millions of smart phones and the focus of intense technological development, some payments experts are warning that biometric data can, just like old-fashioned passwords, be stolen, potentially leading to big problems for consumers and payment-service providers. “Biometrics are sure to proliferate in the next …

Patience, it seems, will be the watchword when it comes to merchant adoption of EMV chip card technology, while the number of cards issued bearing a chip continues to grow. A new report from The Strawhecker Group, a payments consultancy, finds that 37% of U.S. merchant locations are EMV-ready, falling …

The onset of 2017 will usher in the year of the smart phone in e-commerce, according to a projection released Tuesday by eMarketer Inc. The New York City-based researcher says that next year, for the first time, more than half of all so-called digital buyers—51.2%—will make at least one purchase …

While backers of cardless ATM transactions expected consumers to home in on using their smart phones as remote controls for making cash withdrawals, what wasn’t known was how much they understood about the risks from skimming and threats to their financial privacy. As it turns out, that understanding is pretty …

A new data element is getting a lot of discussion in merchant-acquiring and mobile-payments circles. It’s the so-called Payment Account Reference, or PAR, and it’s meant to associate all the payment tokens linked to a single credit or debit card primary account number, or PAN. But implementing PAR could be …

Dallas-based MoneyGram International Inc. posted a mixed set of financial results for all of 2015 and for the fourth quarter as it looks to continued growth in its online business. The money-transfer specialist also said Thursday it has settled for $13 million a legal inquiry into its fraud-prevention measures. For …

Editor’s note: Read the latest by clicking here. A spate of media reports that Visa Inc. owns nearly 10% of Square Inc. are wrong and are based on a misreading of a filing Visa made Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to a person familiar with the matter …

It was all over the financial press Friday morning that Visa Inc. owned nearly 10% of merchant processor Square Inc. But it turns out that Visa’s real stake is a tad lower—try less than 2%. The news stories, which started with a Reuters report out of India, were based on …

While mobile wallets, near-field communication, and EMV have focused all eyes in the payments industry on the physical point of sale, some mobile-payments executives are starting to prepare for what they see as the fading away of the traditional checkout counter. Technology already exists that allows customers to order ahead …

Fiserv Inc., a Brookfield, Wis.-based bank core processor, says its Popmoney peer-to-peer money-transfer service will get a tweak later this year to enable recipients to go directly to an ATM to retrieve funds. Currently, funds sent via Popmoney must be deposited into an eligible account. The new service, dubbed Popmoney …

As promised, the Electronic Transactions Association has updated its 2014 guidelines for merchant acquirers and independent sales organizations on merchant underwriting and monitoring. And more updates are likely as technology and regulators keep the pressure on merchant processors to stay ahead of risks to the payment system. “We really want …

With PayPal Holdings Inc. promoting its fast-growing Venmo peer-to-peer payments service and rumors that Apple Inc. is eyeing the business, P2P transfers are starting to take center stage in the consumer-payments business. And now a new survey indicates the service is growing in appeal to consumers for a variety of …

Leading payment processor First Data Corp. late Tuesday reported modest revenue and transaction growth in 2015’s fourth quarter, as well as better pre-tax profitability and an improved balance sheet in the wake of its October initial public offering, but investors still didn’t like what they saw. The Atlanta-based company’s stock …

Visa Inc. has launched Visa Consumer Transaction Controls, a service that lets Visa-card issuing institutions offer cardholders the ability to set transaction limits with their credit, debit, and prepaid cards. Visa says it works with more than 14,000 financial institutions, but does not provide a U.S.-specific total. Announced Tuesday, the …

With the coming of mobile payments and their attendant security issues expanding demand for so-called token service providers, the PCI Security Standards Council has issued rules intended to keep the tokenization environment safe. The Wakefield, Mass.-based PCI Council in December quietly released a 92-page document titled, “Additional Security Requirements and …

How many point-of-sale terminals have to be enabled for near-field communication (NFC) before the technology becomes a must-have experience for consumers in stores? In the U.S., at least, the answer is 35% of the installed base, according to Osama Bedier, president of Poynt Co., a Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup that …