Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Seeking to contrast the merchant-acquiring industry’s actual practices with the impression created by the government’s Operation Choke Point that acquirers turn a blind eye to shady merchants, the industry’s leading trade group on Monday said its members last year discharged more than 10,000 merchants for fraud. That statistic comes from …

The PCI Security Standards Council has hired a former MasterCard Inc. executive as its new general manager to replace the retiring Bob Russo, and point-of-sale terminal maker Ingenico S.A.’s mobile-payment subsidiary Roam Data has a new leader. Russo, who became the PCI Council’s first general manager in March 2007,about six …

  Bluetooth low energy beacons will play a key role in a mobile payment and loyalty service being developed by SK Planet Inc. and DoubleBeam Inc. that promises easier mobile payments and offer redemption. The beacons connect Bluetooth low energy-compatible smart phones with DoubleBeam’s GoPago tablet-based point-of-sale system. Now in …

Merchants like to gripe about the cost of payment card interchange and processing expenses, but relatively few have done a close analysis of what it really costs to accept the various tender types, according to an Aite Group LLC researcher. If they did, most would conclude that debit cards are …

  Bitcoin vault provider Xapo Ltd. is days away from sending debit cards backed by the digital currency to consumers with registered Xapo Bitcoin accounts. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup, which is incorporated in Hong Kong, also raised $20 million in a recent investment round, bringing its total investment bounty …

The decision by JVL Ventures LLC to rename its Isis mobile-payments company may have been the easy part. Actually scrapping the brand and replacing it with a new name and logo will be much more challenging, experts say. “It’s a huge rebranding exercise,” says Nick Holland, who follows mobile payments …

Catching up with rivals, PayPal Inc. on Monday joined a growing list of e-payments providers that are speeding up settlement time for U.S. merchants. But instead of making faster payments generally available, the San Jose, Calif.-based eBay Inc. subsidiary is offering to cut funding time from up to four business …

With an eye to capturing a share of the potential $2.6 billion in U.S. online gambling revenue expected by 2017, payment processor First Data Corp. launched PayLucky, a suite of existing products for gambling and gaming providers, the company announced today. The suite, which includes the Clover point-of-sale system, prepaid …

Like their brethren in Colorado, the new marijuana stores in the state of Washington will be operating mostly on a cash basis, but operators hope that the federal government eventually will remove obstacles preventing them from getting payment card merchant accounts and business checking accounts. On Monday, the Washington State …

Virtually non-existent seven years ago, the smart phone is steadily establishing its place as perhaps the most rapidly adopted consumer electronic device in U.S. history. Some 70% of U.S. mobile subscribers—or 169 million people—owned one by the end of May, up from 66% just since February, according to the latest …

By Kevin Woodward Venture capitalist Timothy Draper wants to use the nearly 30,000 Bitcoins he won last week in an auction held by the U.S. Marshals Service to fund a Bitcoin trading platform targeting emerging markets, he said last week following the auction. He would not disclose the price of …

With an eye on expanding its international payments capabilities, Optimal Payments Plc bought two U.S. independent sales organizations that cater to e-commerce merchants, the Montreal-based company announced Tuesday. n Meritus posted 2013 revenues of $74.4 million, and Global Merchant Advisors $8.3 million. Both company names remain in place, Lewin says. …

  Online domain company GoDaddy’s new Get Paid service combines payment acceptance for small businesses from up to three payment companies with invoicing and expense-management capabilities. That caters to demands from merchants wanting more than payment processing, says one industry analyst. Get Paid draws its payment data from PayPal, Stripe, …

The U.S. Department of Justice’s controversial Operation Choke Point, an effort to cut off high-risk merchants’ access to electronic payments by challenging the banks and processors that serve them, continues to draw fire. The latest missile comes in the form of a bill from U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., who …

Non-bank ATM operators, which run an estimated 52% of the nation’s approximately 412,000 ATMs, are struggling to maintain profitability as revenues come under pressure and costs continue to rise, according to a recent study of U.S. ATM deployers by Tremont Capital Group Inc. and the ATM Industry Association. On the …

Online fraudsters are attacking a much wider variety of brands, including grocery stores and Bitcoin exchanges, showing a growing level of sophistication in their efforts to gull unsuspecting customers out of their money, according to the latest quarterly report from the Anti-Phishing Working Group Inc., an 11-year-old organization made up …

Merchants that elected not to take a share of the $5.7 billion settlement to resolve a massive credit card interchange case against Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc. and some banks will be given a chance to opt back into a share of the damages under a plan being crafted by lawyers. …

Two MasterCard Inc. rules governing fee changes and disclosures may catch many in the payment industry unaware even though the rules first became known in December. That is the assessment of attorneys Howard Herndon and Josh Rosenblatt at Frost Brown Todd LLC, a Nashville, Tenn.-based firm. “Typically, acquiring banks and …

Retailers have a hearty sense of confidence when it comes to how quickly their organizations would detect a data breach, especially one that targets sensitive payment information, finds a survey from Tripwire Inc., a data-security company. In the survey of 154 retail organizations, 60% said their systems could detect a …

Nothing like a good data breach to serve as a kick in the pants. Thanks in part to Target Corp.’s breach that compromised 40 million payment cards, debit card issuers are committing themselves to the Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip card standard to a much greater extent than they did a year …