Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Health-care electronic funds transfers via the automated clearing house network increased by 177% from October 2013, the first full month a new rule intended to spur such payments was in effect, through September 2014, ACH governing body NACHA reported Monday. Herndon, Va.-based NACHA says transaction volume in September was 15.5 …

With Black Friday results nearly in the books, the holiday-shopping season has officially started, though some observers argue it really began this year on Thanksgiving day itself with a flurry of mobile commerce. Much of that commerce is being driven by users of Apple Inc. devices. Controlling by far the …

Over the past several years, during his conference calls with analysts to review Discover Financial Services’ quarterly earnings, chief executive David W. Nelms occasionally took swipes at Visa Inc.’s efforts to maintain its dominant debit card market share in the wake of the Durbin Amendment, which severely undercut Visa’s Interlink …

  The 870-page tome of proposed rules issued Nov. 13 by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to govern prepaid cards may end up benefitting the top prepaid card issuers, says securities-rating agency Fitch Ratings. The regulations would require so-called “Know Before You Owe” disclosures and aim to improve consumers’ access to account …

  No doubt merchants and the payments industry understand the value of removing valuable cardholder data from merchant payment systems via tokenization. Doing so, however, may complicate merchants\' data-security practices and carry costs, suggests Avivah Litan, vice president and analyst at advisory firm Gartner Inc., in a blog post. Tokenization …

Electronic-commerce spending from work and home desktop computers from Nov 1-23 hit $17.5 billion, up 11% from $15.8 billion in the same period a year earlier, Internet metrics firm comScore Inc. reported Tuesday. Most e-commerce spending is charged to credit and debit payment cards, so the early results for the …

  Consumers want gift cards this holiday season, but are reluctant to ask for them, finds a survey from CashStar Inc., a Portland, Maine-based company that specializes in e-coupons and digital gift cards. Meanwhile the National Retail Federation forecasts that consumers will spend $31.74 billion on gift cards this holiday …

Three years after the Durbin Amendment took effect, the law’s painful impact on the cost of selling soda, candy, newspapers, and other small-ticket items remains an issue. And things may stay that way unless the newly elected Congress acts after taking office at the turn of the year, observers say. …

  Merchant-services provider Swipely Inc. says it is now managing more than $4 billion in annual sales generated by its restaurant, hospitality, and retail clients, representing a four-fold increase over 2013, the company says. Providence, R.I.-based Swipely chief executive Angus Davis says the company’s three-pronged sales approach helps. In addition …

  Consumers walking around stores with their smart phones in hand often send a potentially troublesome signal to many retailers. The shoppers could be shopping an online retailer’s site while using the brick-and-mortar merchant’s store as a showroom. It’s a phenomenon that Las Vegas-based OrderWithMe Inc. says it can help …

In what observers say indicates a growing acceptance of merchant aggregation by payment networks, MasterCard Inc. has increased by 10 times the charge-volume threshold at which a so-called sub-merchant must get its own merchant account. In addition, MasterCard’s recent rule changes preserve back-office settlement procedures that, had the old $100,000 …

USA Technologies Inc. on Friday announced it had secured a three-year agreement with Visa Inc. that will allow the supplier of payments technology for vending machines to continue receiving favorable small-ticket interchange pricing from the network. In the announcement, contained in a brief regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange …

With its clients going increasingly mobile, Intuit Inc. knew it needed a point-of-sale payments solution for its cloud-based QuickBooks Online accounting product. This week, it announced it had found one, and unlike most payments products it has introduced in the past, this one wasn’t homegrown. Intuit recruited Revel Systems Inc., …

  Mobile payments in Canada only garner 2% of all consumer purchases, finds a study from research firm GfK. But that does not signal the low adoption rate will continue. Only 21% of Canadian shoppers, defined as those who have shopped in one of 15 product categories in the past …

At trade show after trade show, and in article after article, payments-industry executives have heard for years now that the U.S. migration to chip cards on the Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) standard, while protecting the point of sale from counterfeit fraud, will force fraudsters to ply their craft online. Indeed, the idea …

  Bitcoin wallet provider Coinbase has launched a “tip” button to enable Coinbase users to make micropayments to Web-site owners. San Francisco-based Coinbase says the button can be used to make one-click payments. The default amount is 300 bits, or about 10 cents this week. Senders can choose other amounts, …

  Digital wallets, especially when used for mobile commerce, are gaining increasing favor among consumers, finds a report from the Adobe Digital Index, a research unit of Adobe Systems Inc., which carries implications for acquirers and payment gateways. In a survey of 400 U.S. consumers, Adobe found that the number …

Target Corp. reported Wednesday that expenses stemming from the big data breach it disclosed 11 months ago now total $248 million. The Home Depot Inc., meanwhile, said Tuesday that the data breach it disclosed in September cost it $28 million on a pre-tax basis in its recently ended third quarter. …

The U.S. Marshals Service held its first auction of bitcoins in June, and now it’s planning an even bigger one for Dec. 4. Like the June 27 auction, the 50,000 bitcoins to be auctioned by sealed bid were seized in October 2013 from Ross Ulbricht, the alleged operator of the …

  First Data Corp. will update its TransArmor tokenization service in 2015 to make it platform-agnostic, while expanding the number of sales channels it is available through, says a First Data executive. Launched in 2010, TransArmor provides merchants a way to mask sensitive cardholder data by replacing them with a …