Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

  Consumers continued to make retailer tills ring in the first quarter, increasing sales, minus automobiles and fuel purchases, at a 4.5% growth rate over the same period in 2014, finds Visa Inc.’s latest Retail Spending Monitor. Overall retail sales growth, include automobile sales, was a modest 1.2%. The largest …

Prepaid card issuer and services provider Green Dot Corp. lost considerable reload volume and revenues in the first quarter because of the discontinuance of its popular MoneyPak product, but the company late Thursday said its core businesses demonstrated good organic growth and recent acquisitions gave a big boost to the …

  Carrier billing as an e-commerce and mobile-commerce payment option is poised to expand significantly beyond the mobile phone realm when Microsoft Corp. releases Windows 10 later this year. And carrier-billing specialist Boku Inc. says direct carrier billing is a payment option for apps and digital content available from Google …

By Jim Daly The federal government sent a message Tuesday that the new virtual-currency providers are subject to the same regulations as long-established money-transfer firms when it announced that Ripple Labs Inc. would pay a $700,000 civil penalty and take remedial actions in lieu of criminal prosecution. The announcements came …

By Jim Daly Wire-transfer market leader The Western Union Co. issued a brief statement early Wednesday afternoon saying reports that it is in early talks to buy rival MoneyGram International Inc. “are not accurate.” The statement appeared to quickly deflate the two companies’ stock prices, especially MoneyGram’s, which had soared …

By Jim Daly U.S. credit and debit card issuers will have about 150 million more EMV chip cards in circulation by year’s end than predicted last summer, according to the latest forecast from an industry group promoting the conversion of U.S. card payments to smart cards. The Payments Security Task …

By John Stewart The Durbin Amendment’s transaction-routing requirements, which have been in effect now for three years, are widely thought to have benefited merchants by increasing competition for debit card traffic. But PIN debit networks that aren’t owned by Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. were expected to benefit as well …

Confidence in the security of new payments systems is not high among businesses executives, finds the “Data Security in the Evolving Payments Ecosystem” report released Monday by the Ponemon Institute LLC. In the report, commissioned by Experian, 36% of respondents said they are not confident about the security of a …

Processing giant First Data Corp. didn’t manage to record a second consecutive profitable quarter, but its financial picture did continue to brighten. Simultaneously, First Data officially launched two new, smaller-footprint products in its Clover line of mobile point-of-sale technology. The Atlanta-based company on Monday announced it had taken a $112 …

Independent sales organization Total Merchant Services Inc. hopes a newly altered agent-compensation plan will result in more merchants using EMV-compatible point-of-sale terminals. The U.S. payment card industry is migrating to EMV chip cards, requiring that merchants use compatible terminals. As a way to motivate its sales agents and get more …

By Jim Daly Leading wire-transfer providers The Western Union Co. and MoneyGram International Inc. both reported big growth in their online businesses in the first quarter while merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc. posted strong increases in charge volume. • They’re still a small portion of its overall business, but …

The message about EMV and its payment-processing benefits is not sinking in with smaller merchants. That’s the assessment from Heartland Payment Systems Inc.’s chief executive Robert O. Carr, who says Heartland is responding by offering all-in-one security technology that includes but goes beyond EMV. “Well, resonating would be an overstatement,” …

Improving online conversion rates, especially for mobile commerce, depends on providing many options for faster checkout experiences. That’s the assertion of the newly released “Mobile Commerce Forecast 2015-2018” from Mark Beccue Consulting Inc. Beccue predicts that global mobile-commerce payment volume will grow from $187.5 billion in 2014 to $744 billion …

It’s becoming a familiar refrain in the payments industry: Payments made using mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablets, continue to garner more and more traction. The latest Mobile Payments Index from international payments company Adyen finds that such payments accounted for 27.2% of total global online payments made …

Visa Inc.’s branding and marketing strengths were what won Costco Wholesale Corp. over from American Express Co. in a set of exclusive acceptance and cobrand agreements announced early in March, according to Visa chief executive Charles W. Scharf, who spoke Thursday afternoon during a conference call to discuss Visa’s results …

Brian V. Mooney, who on Tuesday took over as interim chief executive of the retailer-controlled Merchant Customer Exchange LLC payments consortium, brings strengths to the organization that could prove valuable when MCX at last launches its long-awaited CurrentC mobile-payments system, sources tell Digital Transactions News. And, by some accounts, he …

Transaction volumes, revenues and profits all headed up smartly for MasterCard Inc. in the first quarter. But MasterCard on Wednesday also reported laying out nearly $900 million in rebates and incentives during the quarter to build future volume in an increasingly competitive global card marketplace. In the United States, total …

MasterCard Inc. announced Monday it is spending $600 million to buy Applied Predictive Technologies Inc., an Arlington, Va.-based company that provides analytics services to retailers, financial institutions, and other companies. The deal, expected to close in the second quarter, provides MasterCard with yet another service for merchants. “Merchants, like financial …

When it comes to Apple Inc.’s popular Apple Pay mobile-payment service, some players might figure it’s better to be late than never to participate at all. Issuer Discover Financial Services says consumers will be able to use Discover credit and debit cards with Apple Pay beginning this fall. Apple Pay …

By Jim Daly Grizzled veterans of the payments industry may not have warm and fuzzy feelings for card networks, but the view can be different from consumers’ eyes. In its 27th annual study of brands, a newly released Harris Poll EquiTrend report ranked Visa Inc. as the No. 1 payment …