Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Fifty-four percent of sports bettors using mobile technology earn incomes of $100,000 or more but “many” are worried about the impact of inflation on their ability to make credit card payments in the future, according to research from TransUnion in its report, “Consumer Pulse Online Sports Betting Study.”In other research, some 59% …

First National Bank of Omaha Tuesday gave the trend of virtual card issuing a boost with the launch of Bend, a suite of embedded open, application programming interfaces that enable the integration of financial services, such as customized virtual cards, into existing environments. Brands can use Bend to roll out …

While the Federal Reserve mulls the concept of a national digital dollar, private-sector actors are working toward the same end. The Digital Dollar Project early Wednesday launched what it calls a Technical Sandbox Program in an effort, it said, to help advance understanding of the technical requirements undergirding a central …

Pet Supplies Plus, an operator or franchisor of more than 600 pet stores in North America, chose Adyen NV to process online and in-store payments.Plug’n Play Technologies, a provider of e-commerce technologies, said it has implemented a platform from Authvia that allows stores to request and receive payments via messaging, text, and chat services.Mercury …

With consumer spending for concessions and merchandise purchases steadily increasing at sports stadiums, SpotOn Transact, LLC, which provides point-of-sale and digital-ordering systems to 37 stadiums across the National Football League and the National Collegiate Athletic Association, is gearing up for an increase in volume for the 2022 professional and collegiate …

Nacha, the regulatory body for the automated clearing house network, has named open-banking specialist MX Technologies Inc. a member of its Preferred Partner Program. MX is the 30th company to be named to the program.Consumers’ top five favorite ways to pay are debit cards, credit cards, cash, contactless, and mobile wallets, according …

The Federal Reserve Board on Monday afternoon narrowed the window for the launch of FedNow, its real-time payment service, to the weeks between May and July of 2023. The announcement, which came in a short address by Fed Vice Chair Lael Brainard, is the latest in a series of updates …

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides low-income families with benefits to supplement their food budget, suffered a nationwide outage on Sunday, according to news reports. The cause of the outage, which reportedly affected millions of recipients, is unknown. On Sunday several state agencies that help the U.S. Department …

Online attacks in which criminals seize control of victims’ data are rising, and government agencies are far from immune. That’s now leading states to consider laws prohibiting state agencies from paying ransoms to get the decryption key that would unlock what are often vital files. North Carolina in May and …

A startup rent-payment processor called RentSpree closed on $17.3 million in Series B funding led by Green Visor Capital. The company projects it will process more than $160 million in rent payments over the next 12 months.Truist Financial Corp. launched Truist Invest and Truist Invest Pro, an automated investment advisory service and a …

To make modern fraud detection technology more accessible to community banks, Jack Henry & Associates Inc. late Thursday announced plans to launch early next year Financial Crimes Defender, a cloud-native platform for detecting fraud and other suspicious account activity that can hurt consumer’s financial health, as well as financial crimes, such …

Digital payments are on the rise, and so is payment fraud. As of 2020, nearly 80% of Americans used at least one form of digital payment. Between 2020 and 2021, payment fraud attacks rose dramatically on digital wallets (200%), payment service providers (169%) and crypto exchanges (140%). To keep up …

The buy now, pay later provider Affirm Inc. reported gross merchandise volume for its June quarter totaled $4.4 billion, up 77% year-over-year. For the year ended June 30, volume came to $15.5 billion, up 87%. Active merchants ballooned from 29,000 a year ago to 235,000, driven by Shop Pay Installments, an Affirm …

The ATM world is about to get another publicly held company. Bitcoin Depot, a Bitcoin ATM operator with more than 7,000 machines in the United States and Canada, intends to go public in a merger with GSR II Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company.  Announced Thursday, the proposed deal …

Visa Inc. announced late Wednesday it has now issued more network tokens than there are physical Visa cards, eight years after the launch of the Visa Token Service. With a boom in e-commerce and other digital applications, the service has now issued more than 4 billion tokens, Visa said, almost …

MoviePass, a movie-theater subscription service, selected Usio Inc. as its exclusive prepaid card issuing platform. Usio will be the program manager and processor for the upcoming MoviePass debit card it plans to issue to all subscribers.PayPal Holdings Inc., in conjunction with National Philanthropic Trust and Vanguard Charitable, launched Grant Payments, a product …

The drive to create a data security standard designed for digital financial services applications that use cloud-computing, such as open banking, continues to gain momentum. Anecdotes AI Ltd, Codat Ltd., Skyflow Inc., and Very Good Security Inc. are the latest digital finance companies to join a group of financial technology …

Systemwide contactless-fare technology, which has been available mainly for mass-transit systems in major cities, is starting to find its way into smaller towns. Cubic Corp. on Tuesday  said it will install its Umo mobility platform in buses serving the Canadian town of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, population 72,000. The system, …

Alphabet Inc. said it is expanding Google Wallet to six more countries, including South Africa, bringing to 45 the number of countries in which the product can be used. Google Wallet was introduced this spring as a replacement for Google Pay.Transaction processor Computer Services Inc. said it will be acquired by private investment firms Centerbridge …

Gift cards are expected to be popular presents this holiday season as 60% of consumers say they will buy the cards to fill a void in product availability created by disruptions to product supply chains, says Fiserv Inc.’s Q3 2022 Gift Card Gauge. Discount stores and big-box retailers will be …