Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

  n The purpose of the new “My MBFS” app is to increase customer convenience and continue Mercedes-Benz’s leadership in applying mobile-commerce technology to automobiles, Matt Darrah, manager of B2C digital marketing at Mercedes-Benz n “At Mercedes-Benz Financial Services, we have had this mobile journey, we saw mobile coming in …

The primary reason consumers and small-business owners visit banks is to cash or deposit checks, but mobile capture removes that purpose, says Gary Brand, director of source capture optimization at Fiserv Inc., a Brookfield, Wis.-based vendor of processing technology for financial institutions. “Something’s really happened, all of a sudden [banks …

  The rhetoric spewing from partisans on both sides of the massive credit card interchange-litigation settlement is heating up as a major deadline in the 8-year-old case approaches. May 28 is the last day the court overseeing the case will let merchants opt out of their share of monetary damages …

  The nearly 7-year-old Google Checkout online payment service, once touted as a rival to PayPal, will cease operations in November, Google Inc. announced in a blog post on Monday. In the post, online-search kingpin Google Inc. says it is “retiring” Checkout as part of a “transition to Google Wallet,” …

A plan to expand its footprint in mobile payments by offering white-label applications to merchants is quickly paying dividends for LevelUp, the mobile-payments unit of Boston-based SCVNGR Inc. Washington D.C.-based Sweetgreen, a 17-location chain of organic salad shops, has become the first LevelUp merchant to roll out a branded mobile-payment …

  Good news for independent sales organizations: authorization costs continued their long-term decline over the past two years, according to a recent industry survey. Not-so-good news: clearing and settlement costs have stopped declining, customer-service costs are rising, and processors are eyeing new fees to generate revenues from ISOs. Omaha-based The …

  Google Inc. released a trio of announcements on Wednesday concerning its Google Wallet mobile-payments application, but even taken together these did not add up to the major overhaul of the product that Google promised last fall. Google’s news included: a Wallet-based person-to-person payments service that works with Gmail, Google’s …

  The nascent trend toward tablets as cash-register replacements took several big steps forward this week, as technology players and at least one processor unveiled major promotions, including free transaction processing and other pricing deals, to entice small businesses to adopt mobile payments. On Wednesday, merchant processor Vantiv Inc. launched …

  Three recent breaches at payment card processors show just how much damage such breaches can do, and provide reminders about how hacked companies do their best to say as little as they can about them publicly. Federal authorities say the latest two breaches, which garnered worldwide headlines in recent …

  Google Inc.’s apparent decision to abandon its plan to launch a plastic card as part of its Google Wallet service is yet another sign of how major mobile-wallet players from outside the payments business are struggling to find a winning strategy, sources tell Digital Transactions News. News of the …

  Osama Bedier, vice president of Google Wallet and payments at search-engine giant Google Inc., has left the company, Google said on Thursday. Sources tell Digital Transactions News that Sridhar Ramaswamy, Google’s senior vice president of ads and commerce who also manages search advertising and shopping services, is now heading up …

  Mobile devices may be making it easier for consumers to shop anywhere online, any time, but high shopping-cart abandonment rates are preventing them from cashing in big on this new sales channel. A recent survey by payments-and-authentication- services provider Jumio Inc. reveals that two-thirds of respondents attempting to make …

  n Mobile payments remains a fragmented business with established financial-services players battling it out with startups and telecommunications giants. And progress for near-field communication (NFC), a snazzy, two-way contactless technology that once promised to revolutionize mobile payments, is still coming with painful slowness, according to the paper. n While …

  It looks like mobile-deposit software developer Mitek Systems Inc. and its former ally USAA Federal Savings Bank will be going to the mat in their their patent dispute. Despite a near tripling in revenues to $3.22 million, Mitek on Tuesday reported a $2.39 million loss for fiscal 2013’s second …

Often regarded as the enemy, officials from the federal government gave some friendly advice to merchant acquirers last week about what regulators are concerned with regarding payments, including mobile payments, prepaid cards, and fraud control. The recommendations came during a government panel Thursday at the Electronic Transactions Association’s annual conference …

  Transaction volume at electronic-commerce processor Litle & Co. grew 39% in the first quarter, Litle’s new owner, Vantiv Inc., reported late Monday. Vantiv, a big merchant and card-issuer processor based near Cincinnati, said Litle contributed only one or two percentage points of Vantiv's 23% increase in merchant transactions from …

  Visa Inc.’s decision to license a version of its VisaNet processing network to JPMorgan Chase & Co. generated controversy in merchant-acquiring circles when the two companies announced their deal in February, but now Visa says it is getting inquiries from other client financial institutions that may be interested in …

  MasterCard Inc. chief executive Ajay Banga on Wednesday downplayed the company’s controversial digital-wallet fee and said critics had been generating the “wrong noise” about the pending fee. Banga’s comments came during the No. 2 payment card network’s first-quarter conference call with analysts, when Banga also said U.S. consumer spending …

  With a major expansion of its arrangement with PayPal Inc. due later this year, Discover Financial Services is now “the alternative network for alternative payments in the United States,” Discover chief executive David W. Nelms told an audience of merchant acquirers on Wednesday. Hinting that more deals similar to …

  Discover Financial Services on Tuesday named six prominent merchant acquirers among 50 committed to helping the network bring acceptance of leading online payment system PayPal to more than 2 million physical merchant locations by year’s end. But a notable missing link is No. 1 merchant processor First Data Corp., …