Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

With $12 million in new funding, PayRange Inc. wants to place more of its Bluetooth-equipped dongles inside vending machines to enable more consumers to make contactless, and cashless, payments. The funding, announced Thursday by Portland, Ore.-based PayRange, will be used to expand its staff and increase the number of PayRange-equipped …

While social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest develop so-called buy buttons for the ads they sell, third-party developers are looking at extending the same technology across not only social networks but apps, mobile sites, and even emails. One of the most aggressive of these developers, Santa Clara, Calif.-based XpressBuy …

As I see it, there are three main areas of vulnerability for merchant cash-advance (MCA) providers: 1. Incorrectly assessing the risk. What systems do you have in place for being able to analyze and manage your risk? Many MCA funders come into the market with six months’ runway and then …

As states and national governments consider regulations for virtual currencies, a new report from a Canadian Senate committee recommends a “light touch” lest regulation stifle a promising young industry. In considering any legislation, regulations or policies, the Canadian federal government should “create an environment that fosters innovation for digital currencies …

The gold rush in payments-startup financing that began about a year ago is likely to be even bigger in 2015, according to the latest report from CB Insights, a New York City-based investment-research firm. Last year set a record for startup funding, with $2.23 billion pouring into new payments companies. …

Processor Global Payments Inc. says it will offer American Express Co.’s OptBlue merchant-acceptance program to its Canadian merchants beginning June 24. Participation in OptBlue enables merchant acquirers and independent sales organizations to offer AmEx acceptance to small businesses and set the pricing through a one-stop-shopping option when they sell acceptance …

Merchant processor Vantiv Inc. has won one of the biggest retail merchant-processing contracts out there—the U.S. Postal Service’s credit and debit card business, including its USPS.com online component. Counting post offices, branches and substations, the Postal Service has more than 35,000 retail outlets in all 50 states, U.S. territories and …

Green Dot Corp. late Monday removed a big source of uncertainty about its near-term future by announcing a five-year renewal of its contract with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to be both program manager and issuer of the Wal-Mart MoneyCard prepaid product. But while the deal secures a major source of revenue …

Now that a federal appeals court has refused to stay a lower court’s ruling, merchants are free to induce customers to use cards other than those of American Express Co. while the appeals court hears AmEx’s argument that the lower court erred. That means merchants, at least for now, have …

Contactless payments made by tapping a smart phone against a point-of-sale terminal are increasing, according to a Harris Poll survey released Thursday. The survey of more than 2,200 U.S. adults found that the proportion of the general population who either experienced or witnessed a contactless smart-phone payment increased from 17% …

With no exemptions for small merchants from the Oct. 1 liability shift for EMV transactions, efforts to educate them are well under way, with even the largest of banks instructing them on what EMV means for their businesses. “It’s more of an industry message,” says Deanna Karhuniemi, vice president of …

The MyCheck mobile app is gaining some ground in a crowded field of applications that enable consumers to order and pay restaurant tabs. New York City-based MyCheck LLC announced Thursday that the 68-location Twin Peaks restaurant chain will offer its iOS and Android white-label app to customers for payments and …

Point-of-sale payment card fraud will be easing off thanks largely to the introduction of EMV chip card payments to the United States in the next few years. But fraudsters, according to a new report from Javelin Strategy & Research, will be back in stores armed with cards using stolen credentials …

Independent sales organization Pivotal Payments Inc. says its FlexPoint point-to-point encryption service for point-of-sale software systems has been certified by its processor, Total System Services Inc. (TSYS). FlexPoint, which launched in 2014 in Canada, encrypts payment data directly on the payment device and sends the encrypted data directly to the …

First Data Corp. has added the Clover Mini to its roster of tablet-based point-of-sale products, the Atlanta-based processor announced Tuesday. The device has the same capabilities as the countertop-sized Clover Station, but in a 7-inch screen. The Clover products offer merchants the ability to add a wide variety of apps …

When Acculynk Inc. introduced its Payzur person-to-person payments service two years ago, it saw it as a way of leveraging the company’s virtual PIN-pad technology along with PIN-debit networks to enable faster, guaranteed payments between individuals. n Last month, MasterCard laid down a gauntlet with its MasterCard Send, a back-end …

There may be a number of competing definitions and products already in the market and under development, but the current state of payments tokenization may not be as out of whack as some may think. That’s the assessment of the latest report from the Mobile Payments Industry Workgroup, whose members …

The clearXchange payments service owned by five of the nation’s six largest banks on Monday announced a real-time payments service that includes not only its original person-to-person payments franchise but also business-to-consumer payments. Mike Kennedy, chief executive of San Francisco-based clearXchange, tells Digital Transactions News that the system is live …

Now that companies like Dwolla Inc., Facebook Inc., Microsoft Inc., and Square Inc. are making headlines with actual or expected services for a booming person-to-person payments market, financial institutions are scrambling to come up with solutions for their customers. One popular option is to leverage the automated clearing house network, …

With little fanfare, some of the nation’s major PIN-debit networks over the past couple of years have instituted so-called participation fees that are assessed for each merchant location in the network. The fees’ progenitor, says a veteran market observer, is Visa Inc.’s Fixed Acquirer Network Fee (FANF), which Visa instituted …