Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Mastercard Inc. is teaming with videogame-commerce company Xsolla in an effort to smooth online-gaming checkouts by enabling new payment options for Xsolla’s videogame platform, the card network said. Mastercard cardholders will be able pay for gaming purchasing using credit card loyalty points from participating merchants and issuers. They can also …

The buy now, pay later trend has lifted a wide range of companies specializing in these online and point-of-sale installment-payment products, not least Affirm Holdings Inc. But late on Wednesday the 11-year-old company reported subpar results for its December quarter and announced it is dismissing 19% of its workforce. The …

Bank of America Corp. said the 608 patents it received in 2022 was a record number and was 19% more than in 2021, with grants covering areas such as mobile banking and payments, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and other technologies. Kasheesh, a digital payments platform than enables consumers to split payments …

Seeking to entice small businesses to pay for purchases using their Visa business card, Visa Inc. on Wednesday launched Visa SavingsEdge, a program that rewards small businesses that have Visa business cards with savings and discounts on business-related services from about 60 merchants. The rewards and incentives include everyday savings …

A bill designed to allow merchants to have a choice of networks for routing credit card transactions failed to pass last year, but now international tensions could affect the proposed law’s prospects in the new Congress. The bill, called the Credit Card Competition Act, would mandate that merchants have a …

Cost surprises at checkout are the leading cause of cart abandonment, with 57% of consumers saying they walked away from checkout at least once in the past year because of unexpected delivery costs, according to a wide-ranging shopping report released by point-of-sale technology provider Verifone Inc., which surveyed 995 respondents globally. Price …

Merchant acceptance, payments, and network and financial technology were the key pillars propelling Fiserv Inc.’s better -than-expected organic growth during the fourth quarter and for fiscal year 2022. Organic revenue growth—growth apart from recent acquisitions—for the three core segments of Fiserv’s business increased 17%, 9%, and 5%, respectively, compared to …

Real-time payments are getting more attention in financial services, and vendors are quickly enabling the faster-payment capability. Among the latest to do so is Sionic Corp., with its suite of services that includes its Verified Rapid Payments, and Oracle Corp., with a new set of cloud-based banking services. Atlanta-based Sionic …

The Merchants Payments Coalition released a letter it sent to the House Financial Services Committee arguing the Credit Card Competition Act should be enacted to block what the merchant-advocacy group calls a “national security threat” from China UnionPay, a China-based credit card network. The House committee has scheduled a hearing for this morning on “Combatting the …

Seeking to improve merchant adoption of PINless debit transactions, the U.S. Payments Forum Monday released a white paper detailing the potential obstacles to PINless debit implementation in the United States and how they can be overcome. One advantage of PINless debit transactions is that they can be processed faster than PIN-based debit transactions, …

A company called AmazeWallet over the weekend said it will soon launch a so-called super app that will let users run blockchain technology on a mobile phone. The app will run such functions as mining tokens, exchanging cryptocurrency, and sending encrypted messages, the London-based company noted. AmazeWallet said it has …

Card-issuing platform Marqeta Inc. closed on its acquisition of Power Finance Inc., a credit card management service. The $275-million deal was announced Jan. 30. U.S. semiconductor maker MKS Instruments Inc. reported it is investigating a ransomware attack that happened last week, according to Reuters. The company said it is temporarily suspending operations at some its plants. A group …

Clickatell, a U.S. provider of mobile commerce and messaging solutions, announced late Thursday it is partnering with South Africa-based airline FlySafair to enable the airline’s customers to pay for checked luggage using the WhatsApp messaging channel. To make a payment, the airline’s customers access the WhatsApp channel on their mobile …

With sports betting and casino gambling steadily gaining prominence as a payments market, payment processors are increasingly jumping on the opportunities the market presents. In the latest development, gaming-payments specialist Sightline Payments said it will offer its Play+ card, which has attracted 1.5 million users so far, as a Visa-branded …

Amazon.com Inc. reported net sales of $514 billion for 2022, up 9% over 2021, excluding an impact from changes in foreign-exchange rates. Sales in the North American market grew 13% over 2021, to $315.9 billion. The company recorded an operating loss of $2.8 billion in North America, swinging from a positive …

Merchant satisfaction with payment processors has dwindled in the past year, as sellers cope with the impact of inflation on their processing costs as well as on their business in general, according to J.D. Power’s 2023 U.S. Merchant Services Satisfaction Study. The merchant satisfaction score for merchant-services providers totaled 853, …

Contactless payments have taken off in the United States and other markets in recent years, but now a piece of malware has emerged that can block wave-and-pay or tap-to-pay transactions and force users to insert their cards in a terminal instead, according to a new report by the Moscow-based global …

Citizens Financial Group Inc. has launched the Zelle peer-to-peer payments service for the bank’s small-business customers. U.S.-based Clickatell said it has deployed its Chat 2 Pay service with a pay-by-link capability for FlySafair, a South African airline for mobile payments via’s FlySafair’s WhatsApp channel. Payments provider Lightspeed Commerce Inc. announced it processed $22.4 billion in volume for …

Observers have warned that an activist Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is likely to act on multiple fronts that involve the payments industry. Early Wednesday it released its latest proposal, a move to cut the $12 billion it estimates consumers pay annually in credit card late fees. While the proposal could …

P97 Networks, a provider of cloud-based mobile-commerce technology to convenience stores, gas stations, and the automotive industry, is teaming with Visa Inc. to deploy Visa’s token technology as a way to reduce friction with in-car payments, as well as create new customer experiences for mobile-wallet users. P97 will use Visa’s …