Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

By John Stewart With Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. making headway with online merchants with their streamlined checkout services, it was only a matter of time before network rivals introduced their own versions. American Express Co. did just that Thursday, announcing what it is calling an “unwallet” to allow its …

By Jim Daly Next week’s planned split of PayPal from parent company eBay Inc. has payments investors anticipating that plenty of locked-up value and growth opportunities will be released for the online payments leader. PayPal began trading on a so-called “when-issued” basis Monday on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the …

The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday issued nine guidelines summarizing its vision for faster payments as banks, payment processors, tech companies, and other government regulators continue work on proposals for improving U.S. payments. “Companies developing new financial technologies should be building systems from the outset with consumer protections …

Smart phones continue to dominate mobile payments made by consumers, garnering 64.1% of all such mobile transactions in the second quarter of 2015, reports the Adyen Mobile Payments Index. That’s an increase from 61.8% in the first quarter, and handily bests mobile transactions made with tablets. The use of tablets …

By Jim Daly Retail ATM network owner and manager Cardtronics Inc. reported Tuesday morning that its biggest merchant customer, Dallas-based 7-Eleven Inc., picked a corporate affiliate to run its U.S. ATM fleet when the leading convenience-store chain’s 10-year placement contract with Cardtronics expires in July 2017. 7-Eleven accounted for 17.5% …

Credit card use, even in merchant categories dominated by debit cards, appears to be growing quicker than debit card use, reports the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia in a whitepaper released Monday. The report finds that, from 2007 through 2012, credit cards’ share of payments increased 5% at gas stations …

Retailers, especially larger ones, face a contradiction: they know they need to update their point-of-sale systems to take advantage of new technologies and consumer-shopping behavior, yet most resist that urge because of the expense. That’s one of the findings from “Commerce Convergence: Closing the Gap Between Online and In-Store,” a …

You may have heard the term, “friendly fraud.” It’s no surprise, then, that there’s nothing friendly about it. And it’s quickly becoming a major problem for merchants across the globe. Friendly fraud, also called friendly-fraud chargebacks or cyber-shoplifting, occurs when a customer makes a purchase online and then files a …

New data from Visa Europe indicate that while contactless payments are still a small portion of European card-based payments, they’re growing fast and likely far exceed the current level of U.S. contactless payments. London-based Visa Europe, a bank-owned licensee of Visa Inc., on Monday said there are 2.6 million contactless …

The PCI Security Standards Council this week updated its standards governing point-to-point data encryption (P2PE) and card-reading devices for the point of sale, ATMs, kiosks and mobile devices. One of the key changes in the new Version 2.0 of the P2PE standard will make it easier for security-solutions providers to …

With a little more marketing oomph behind it, the gift card market rebounded in 2014 after a down year in 2013, according to a report released Wednesday by Mercator Advisory Group. Virtual gift cards, a small but key segment of the market, held their own and may soon benefit from …

PayPal Inc. plans to buy online wire-transfer provider Xoom Corp. in an all-cash deal valued at $890 million, the companies announced late Wednesday. The planned acquisition comes less than three weeks before PayPal’s expected spin-off from eBay Inc. and will bring under PayPal’s wing a highly regarded rival in the …

There’s something off about the Apple Watch, especially when it comes to Apple Pay. It’s a bit of a hassle to set up. Let me explain. When I got the watch the other day, the feature I first wanted to activate was Apple Pay, the contactless payment service Apple Inc. …

Social-media network Facebook Inc. says its Messenger person-to-person payments service is available nationwide beginning Tuesday. Messenger is Facebook’s direct-messaging service. In March, the network launched the P2P service to a few locations. David Marcus, Facebook vice president of messaging, made the announcement of general availability today on Twitter. Both senders …

By John Stewart While payments startups are enjoying a record flood of investment capital, venture-capital and private-equity firms aren’t the only investors spotting opportunity in these companies. Directly or through their venture arms, established companies like MasterCard Inc. and Google Inc. are pouring cash into startups as well, either to …

Despite its strengths, online wire-transfer provider Xoom Inc. faces increasingly tough competition from newer market entrants such as PayPal Inc., which is taking its popular Venmo person-to-person payments service abroad, and from established agent-based providers such as The Western Union Co. and MoneyGram International Inc., which are increasing their online …

Leading ATM manufacturer NCR Corp. this week issued a warning about a new variant of card skimming that gives an ATM user no clue that the machine’s card reader is stealing debit card information. Meanwhile, a report says payment cards used at a theme park in Hershey, Pa., may have …

By Kevin Woodward Encryption technologies, which mask sensitive card data with mathematically derived characters and numbers, appear to be the security method that resonates best with merchants. That’s the result of a Digital Transactions News survey that asked about EMV, tokenization, and encryption. Forty-five percent of respondents cited encryption, followed …

Directors of online auction and e-commerce giant eBay Inc. on Friday formally approved previously announced plans to separate eBay from its big payments subsidiary, PayPal Inc. The separation becomes official July 17, when, under a stock distribution plan, eBay shareholders of record on July 8 will get one share of …

America’s tardiness in adopting EMV chip card technology has long been known to contribute to rising rates of fraud here, but now it appears the country’s plans to convert to EMV are, ironically, causing pain overseas. Fraudulent cross-border transactions on debit cards issued in the United Kingdom increased 25% in …