Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Implementing EMV chip card payments can be anything but a cheap and easy plug-and-play for small businesses, according to testimony several merchants gave before a U.S. House of Representatives committee Wednesday. Art Potash, chief executive of Potash Markets, a 65-year-old family-run Chicago grocery operation with three stores, told the House …

Two weeks after what has come to be regarded as the official start date for EMV chip cards in the United States, senior executives with the major card networks gave a largely upbeat progress report to an audience of acquiring-industry owners and managers last Thursday, while acknowledging that much work …

By Kevin Woodward None can escape the notoriety of mobile payments, but most consumers apparently are able to ignore the allure of using the smart phone-based technology. Only 18% of consumers use their mobile phones to make at least one payment a week, finds the 2015 North America Consumer Digital …

UniRush LLC’s RushCard declared a four-month fee holiday over the weekend after a glitch during the prepaid card’s switch to a new processor that began Oct. 11 limited access to an undisclosed but apparently large number of customers’ accounts. Cincinnati-based UniRush did not identify the processor. The glitch apparently started …

Diebold Inc., the second-largest U.S.-based ATM manufacturer after NCR Corp., disclosed over the weekend that it is in discussions to buy Paderborn, Germany-based ATM maker Wincor Nixdorf AG. North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold issued a statement Saturday confirming that it has a non-binding agreement with Wincor Nixdorf “regarding the key parameters of …

By John Stewart Top executives in the acquiring business are accustomed to looking far into the future, but one near-term concern popped up repeatedly at this week’s Strategic Leadership conference in Scottsdale, Ariz.: How will merchants react when they get their first statements showing chargebacks for counterfeit card fraud? As …

  First Data Corp.’s push to transform itself into a nimbler and more responsive payments processor continues on, with changes in its internal structure and approach to servicing merchants leading the way, says a First Data executive. In an interview Thursday with Digital Transactions News, Dan Charron, First Data executive …

With the coming of EMV chip card payments to the U.S. point of sale on Oct. 1, merchants, merchant acquirers and credit and debit card issuers are bracing for an expected boom in card-not-present (CNP) fraud. Countless processors, payment gateways and tech companies have announced products and services meant to …

  Add TransFirst Holdings Inc. to the growing roster of payments companies turning to the publicly traded stock markets to raise cash. The big merchant acquirer late Friday announced it filed an S-1 registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering of stock. The filing, …

  Processing titan First Data Corp.’s return to the stock market Thursday was met with a tepid response from investors in the Atlanta-based company. First Data, which turned to the market to raise money to pay off debt, priced its initial public offering late Wednesday at $16 per share, which …

    As more merchants begin to realize the need to become EMV compliant and purchase EMV-capable devices, they will be searching for the right solution for their business. Imagine being one of the few VARs able to provide an EMV-compatible solution and the opportunities it could present. In this …

  With a mission to offer as many free, or cheap, money-exchange services as possible, Uphold, a virtual funds and commodity platform, on Wednesday launched the first of a four-phase effort to expand its reach among consumers, merchants, charitable organizations and software developers. Uphold, the new name of Bitreserve, an …

After alerting the investment community in July that it intended to file for an initial public offering of stock, merchant processor Square Inc. on Wednesday finally went public with its plans. San Francisco-based Square, which first made a name for itself by providing mobile-payment services to tiny businesses and individual …

Another 800-pound gorilla will soon be promoting a digital wallet, only this time it’s not a technology firm. It’s JPMorgan Chase & Co., a world leader in payment card issuance and merchant acquiring. “We’re launching our own wallet. You’ll be hearing a lot more about it,” Mike Passilla, chief executive …

  VeriFone Systems Inc. reported Tuesday that it bought Curb, a taxi-hailing service that offers consumers an electronic hailing app. The move boosts San Jose, Calif.-based VeriFone’s involvement in taxis, which started almost 10 years ago, and complements Way2ride, a taxi-payment service VeriFone launched in 2013 to provide. The Curb …

Within a week, four more major retailers—ExxonMobil, Sears, Shell Oil, and WalMart—will join the CurrentC pilot that started last month in Columbus, Ohio. That’s according to Brian V. Mooney, a long-time processing executive who took over in April as interim chief executive of the mobile wallet’s sponsor organization, Merchant Customer …

By John Stewart The rise of tokenization into a major payments business helps enable enterprises like Apple Pay and Android Pay but could also pose a threat to the financial institutions that have historically issued the majority of the cards consumers use most often. That threat lies in the fact …

The American Bankers Association seems to have persuaded the Federal Bureau of Investigation to do something the Bureau rarely ever does, at least in public: change its mind. The FBI’s original position was the consumers should enter a personal identification number whenever possible when using their new EMV chip cards. …

A public service announcement the FBI posted Thursday warning consumers that the new EMV chip cards “are vulnerable to exploitation by fraudsters” and urging them to enter a PIN instead of a signature during EMV credit card transactions was removed Friday, apparently at the behest of the leading banker trade …

Finding more ways to incorporate near-field communication (NFC) technology into everyday objects could eventually mean more payments. At least that’s the future as envisioned by panelists at the NFC Solutions Summit this week in Phoenix. Sponsored by the Smart Card Alliance, the conference examined ways NFC technology, which enables wireless …