Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

With the April 18 tax-filing deadline bearing down, a new cash-payment option from the Internal Revenue Service and payment processors PayNearMe and Official Payments lets consumers pay federal income taxes in cash at 7-Eleven convenience stores—and if there’s any money left, they can ease the pain with a Slurpee. PayNearMe, …

With financial institutions, merchants, and software application developers all looking for better online security than that afforded by the traditional, static user name and password, the Fast IDentity Online (FIDO) Alliance’s brand of authentication products is starting to get traction. The Mountain View, Calif.-based industry consortium reported Monday that 150 …

•  PayPal Holdings Inc. will not follow through on plans announced two weeks ago to expand in Charlotte, N.C., and add 400 jobs because of North Carolina’s recently enacted House Bill 2, which PayPal says “perpetuates discrimination and it violates the values and principles that are at the core of …

Automated clearing house governing body NACHA says nearly all of the nation’s biggest financial institutions plan to originate same-day ACH payments this year. The January-February telephone survey of executives at 22 of the nation’s top 25 ACH originators found that 95%, which works out to all but one of the …

E-retailing giant Amazon.com Inc. unveiled an e-commerce developer program Monday designed to spread Amazon’s payments service across more shopping sites. Dubbed the Amazon Payments Partner Program, the invitation-only program targets e-commerce developers and platform providers to help them add a pay or Amazon log-in button to their checkout pages. Already, …

The Florida merchants that sued all the major card networks and eight of the 10 largest bank issuers last month saw no other way to deal with the flood of chargebacks they incurred after the EMV liability shift, according to a top executive with one of the merchants and an …

• VeriFone Systems Inc. introduced Verifone Carbon, a black, portable point-of-sale system for café owners, quick-service restaurants, and stores that features a tablet screen for the merchant and a smaller screen for the customer, and a stand with a built-in printer. The Intel-powered device includes VeriFone’s cloud-based Commerce Platform that …

    Disruptive technologies, computer security, and global standards are poised to enable secure, seamless digital operations—supporting new payment models, while addressing risk. Today’s Challenges There’s no question that the payment and transaction landscape is complex, touching everyone from consumers, solution providers, and merchants to payment networks and banks. Regulatory …

A new report about data breaches from a law firm that analyzed compromises affecting more than 300 of its clients in 2015 has some unique perspectives that supplement findings from data-security technology firms such as Mandiant and Trustwave or telecommunications giant Verizon, all of which have produced widely read summaries …

Six months after the U.S. payment card industry adopted EMV chip card transactions as the preferred card technology, MasterCard Inc. says 67% of U.S.-issued consumer credit cards bearing its mark have chips, and 1.2 million U.S. merchant locations now accept the card. The data comes six months after the Oct. …

• Prepaid card services provider Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. acquired extrameasures LLC, a promotions and incentives firm that offers Visa-branded and private-label rewards and gift cards. The deal follows Blackhawk’s acquisitions of other incentives companies, including Parago, InteliSpend, CardLab, and Incentive Solutions.   • Prepaid card provider Green Dot Corp. …

Do competing acquirers run a significant risk if they ignore the way Square Inc. operates? Some experts are now saying they do, though you wouldn’t think so in the light of recent events. When 6-year-old Square went public in November, the result was bloody. On the first day of trading, …

The U.S. payments industry is keeping a watchful eye on friendly-fraud chargebacks now that the EMV liability shift is in effect. According to software enterprise CA Technologies, global card-not-present fraud by 2018 will be at least double the $2.9 billion logged in 2014. Fraudulent chargebacks, always a risk for sellers, …

Contrary to what many may suspect, price is not the top reason retailers switch from one point-of-sale provider to another, according to a study from Capterra Inc., a business-software review site. In a survey of more than 400 merchants, 34% cited a POS system’s lack of necessary features as the …

• Braintree launched Braintree Auth as an invitation-only service in beta. The service streamlines integration of Braintree merchants with e-commerce platforms and eases the way for new payment methods enabled by Braintree, a unit of PayPal Holdings Inc. Braintree Auth currently processes payments on e-commerce platforms Bigcommerce, WooCommerce, and 3DCart. …

For years, the wave of fraud receded like an outgoing tide for companies that accepted electronic payments from consumers and other businesses. But last year, a tidal wave crashed on shore. Fully 73% of companies reported they had suffered actual or attempted payments fraud in 2015, up 11 percentage points …

While many ATM operators know what hardware and software their fleets need to enable EMV chip card acceptance, most are waiting to fully upgrade until concerns about routing issues, chargeback rates, and continuing uncertainty subside, according to the 2016 ATM Channel EMV Readiness survey from the ATM Industry Association. Like …

• The Federal Reserve picked consulting firm McKinsey & Co. to support its Faster Payments Task Force efforts this year by assessing solution proposals from various payments providers. • Merchant processor Square Inc. announced its “Build With Square,” a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that integrates point-of-sale and-online payments capabilities with …

EMVCo, the chip card standards body owned by the world’s largest payment card networks, on Tuesday formally updated its tokenization specification to include the new Payment Account Reference data element. The purpose of PAR is to match tokens to the underlying primary account number of a credit or debit card …