Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

    By Steven Velasquez, Senior Vice President and Head of Partner Business Development for Elavon, Inc. The past two years have brought unprecedented change to both business and consumer behavior. 2020 was the year small businesses needed to find a way to adapt their operations to survive in a …

Fresh off a $23-million round of new funding, Infinicept, a Denver-based firm that specializes in embedded payments, intends to use the money to add scalability and functionality to its payments platform, expand into international markets, and add tools and processes for clients.  As a result, Infinicept says, clients will have …

Paya Holdings Inc., which has been acquisitive in recent years, isn’t done doing deals. Chief executive Jeff Hack won’t name names, but multiple acquisition targets have clearly been scoped out. “We’re busy doing due diligence on a variety of deals. We see attractive opportunities for inorganic growth. You should expect …

Payments provider Priority Technology Holdings Inc. reported first-quarter revenue of $153.2 million, up 35% year-over-year.PayBright said it will provide installment payments to passengers using CheapOair.ca, an online travel agency.Travel platform Agoda said it now offers interest-free credit card installment payments on its booking platform in a partnership with Visa Inc.E-commerce fraud protection provider Signifyd said it …

The white-hot buy now, pay later market got even hotter Tuesday as Visa Inc. announced an expansion of its Visa Ready program with Visa Ready for BNPL. More than 20 partners are now live on Visa Ready for BNPL, including ACI Worldwide Inc., CyberSource Corp., FIS Inc., Marqeta Inc., and …

While the payments industry reckons with the arrival of real-time settlement capability, an appetite among financial institutions for faster payments in general has clearly emerged. Dollar volume on the automated clearing house network for transactions settled on the same day grew 53% in March compared to February, following the introduction …

Apartment-rental platform Livly said tenants can make rent payments in cryptocurrency through the Livly Resident Mobile App. Landlords will be paid in U.S. dollars.Banking-technology provider Jack Henry & Associates said consumers and businesses will be able to access cryptocurrency trading through the company’s Banno Digital Platform. Jack Henry is partnering with NYDIG, a crypto …

Focused on iGaming as a growth strategy, Paysafe Ltd. announced Monday it is expanding its relationship with Playtech plc, a provider of gambling software, to the United Kingdom and Europe. The deal builds off the two companies’ existing relationship in United States. The deal will allow iGaming operators in the U.K. …

At least some payments players appear to be preparing for an important new phase in the buy now, pay later business, with an opening salvo to include significantly larger loans and revised credit terms that make the advances appear more like traditional installment programs. The move comes as the short-term …

Large retailers that use Fiserv Inc. payments-acceptance technology can add loyalty functions via a new agreement between Fiserv and loyalty-technology provider Exchange Solutions.The global standards body EMVCo said it is developing an EMV Contactless Kernel Specification for contactless payment acceptance around the world. The new specification will take the place of the more than …

Block Inc.’s Cash App unit perked up in the first quarter, as the company reported that usage and instant-deposit volume for the digital wallet both increased during the period. With Bitcoin activity excluded, revenue for Cash App in the quarter grew $203 million, a 38% jump, compared to the first …

Bank of America Institute reported that credit and debit card spending by BofA credit and debit cardholders increased 13% in April compared to the same month in 2021. Credit card dollar volume rose 22%, while spending on debit cards was up 6%. Combined transactions increased 8%.Some 43% of consumers would use …

Kabbage from American Express has been tracking recovery trends and the growth outlook for U.S. small businesses. Polling 563 small-business leaders, our latest installment exhibits how small businesses are adapting to a shifting market as they look beyond pandemic-wrought challenges, adjust for inflation, and modify hiring approaches. Small businesses are preparing …

Lightspeed Commerce Inc. early Thursday announced the launch of Lightspeed Retail. The new platform, which pulls features from platforms of other companies the Montreal-based processor has acquired, combines point-of-sale, payments, and e-commerce solutions.  The platform also leverages so-called headless commerce technology, which is an e-commerce architecture where front-end applications are decoupled …

The Judiciary Committee of the U.S. Senate heard testimony Wednesday from witnesses both for and against regulation of credit card interchange. Speakers represented a supermarket chain, merchant groups, Mastercard and Visa, and a bank. The hearing showed that “while more Democrats than Republicans likely would support greater intervention in the …

The big payments fintech Stripe Inc. extended its reach into the world of open banking late on Wednesday with the launch of Stripe Financial Connections, an application that allows businesses to establish direct connections with their customers’ bank accounts. The new application will enable businesses to verify accounts for payments …

By: Bryan Brouillard For today’s ISOs and processors, more product offerings mean a bigger, more consistent merchant base. There’s one major problem: Traditional off-the-shelf products tend to be generic, costly, and complicated. Having served over 1 million merchants during my 20 years in merchant acquiring and lending, I’m familiar with …

There’s a bit of apparent good news when it comes to chargebacks. The chargeback-to-transaction ratio decreased from 1.94% in 2020 to 1.52% in 2021, and is also down from the remarkable 3.76% seen in 2017. That’s according to the fourth annual “The Year in Chargebacks Report” from Midigator LLC, a …

Against a background of emerging real-time payments and steady growth in automated clearing house transactions, The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC is working to mask those transfers with a technology the payment card business has used for years—tokenization. The job is enormous. “We’re just starting—it’s going to take time,” says …

Processor Fiserv Inc. announced it is adding buy now, pay later services from Affirm Inc. to its Carat operating system. Affirm joins Bread, Synchrony, and Zip as current providers. Affirm said its service will be the first fully-integrated BNPL provider with Carat.Payments provider Rapyd Financial Networks Ltd. launched Virtual Accounts, intended to allow businesses anywhere globally …