Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

The commerce platform Bolt has agreed to acquire the cryptocurrency provider Wyre to enable consumers to spend crypto at Bolt merchants, which will receive fiat currency. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close before year’s end, were not disclosed.In related news, payments platform Nium said it has partnered with cryptocurrency specialist BitPay to allow …

A serious expansion of the Zelle peer-to-peer payments network or just saber rattling to get a better deal from the card networks? That’s one question raised by payments-industry experts after The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co.—two of the seven big financial institutions …

Payment fraud continued to decline in 2021 with 71% of organizations reporting they have been victims of payments fraud activity, compared to 74% in 2020 and 81% in 2019, according to the Association for Financial Professionals’ annual fraud report. The 2021 results are the lowest since 2014. The Bethesda, Md.-based …

At least a couple of banks—Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co.—are proponents of expanding the Zelle peer-to-peer payments service to retail payments, The Wall Street Journal reported. Owned by Early Warning Services LLC, itself owned by seven of the largest U.S. banks including BofA and Wells, Zelle offers account-to-account payments. The …

Payments-technology provider MagTek Inc. on Tuesday launched the latest product on its DynaFlex platform, the DynaFlex II card reader, and also unveiled its DynaProx family of readers for transactions involving NFC mobile wallets as well as barcodes. The new technology follows a two-year span in which businesses have sought out …

In an effort to tackle the growing problem of digital-payment fraud, Early Warning Services LLC on Tuesday introduced Authentify, an account-based identity-verification service for consumers and businesses. When loaded on to a business’s Web site or app, Authentify streamlines the customer identity-verification process by allowing consumers to share their bank-account …

Ontario International Airport in California is adopting Shift4 Payments Inc.s’ VenueNext mobile point-of-sale technology to allow passengers to order and pay for food and merchandise using their mobile phones. The service includes new self-checkout technology that allows travelers to scan a UPC code, add it to a shopping cart, and …

Payments provider TouchBistro launched TouchBistro Marketing, aimed at helping restaurants connect and market to customers via custom marketing campaigns. The new system links to TouchBistro’s restaurant-management platform.Innovative Payment Solutions Inc. announced the second phase of its IPSIPay App with approval from Visa Inc. for use of Visa debit cards within the app.PayPal Holdings …

After years of soliciting input from more than 200 organizations in the payments industry, the PCI Security Standards Council Thursday published version 4.0 of the PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). The new standard, which provides a baseline of technical and operational requirements designed to protect account data, replaces version …

Transactions on gift cards and cryptocurrency—and even buy now, pay later capability—are coming to commercial washers, dryers, and vending machines with an announcement Monday by PayRange Inc. that it will support the new payment methods. The Portland, Ore.-based company, which says it processes for more than half a million commercial …

Paysafe Ltd. announced it is processing payments for several iGaming operators in the Canadian province of Ontario, including PointsBet and theScoreBet.Diebold Nixdorf said Langley Federal Credit Union selected the company to operate and manage its self-service banking channel. The credit union said it has more than 320,000 membersBuy now, pay later specialist Klarna …

The drive towards open banking gained additional momentum Friday with the announcement Friday of a partnership between Qolo, an omnichannel platform provider to fintechs, and open-banking platform provider MX Technologies Inc. The partnership, which formalizes an existing working relationship between the two companies that has produced more than 30 joint …

The 25 biggest U.S. merchant acquirers control about 90% of payment dollar volume, even as e-commerce may be losing some of its recent momentum, according to the latest ranking of U.S. merchant acquirers by The Strawhecker Group, released this week. Overall, U.S. acquirers processed more than $9 trillion in payment …

Some 79% of cybersecurity professionals globally said their organizations had been hit by ransomware within the last 12 months, according to a survey of 620 respondents conducted by Enterprise Strategy Group and commissioned by OwnBackup, a data protection platform.Payments provider Repay Holdings Corp. announced an integration with Flex, a provider of core system …

Almost eight years after it launched the Apple Pay mobile-payment service, Apple Inc.’s purported move to bring some of its payment-processing and financial-services operations in-house once again could shake up the payments industry. Just how, though, is a big unknown at the moment. Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple is not commenting on …

Retailers worldwide lose billions every year due to chargebacks, and a significant and growing portion of them are a result of chargeback fraud. However, it doesn’t have to be that way if businesses are proactive about implementing the right prevention strategies.  Chargeback fraud can be defined as when an individual …

The PCI Security Standards Council published version 4 of the PCI Data Security Standard. Features of the new standard include, among other changes, updated firewall terminology and a requirement to implement multi-factor authentication for access to the cardholder data environment.Processor Adyen said it is expanding beyond payments to offer embedded financial products, including Adyen …

For the second time in a week, Fiserv Inc. has taken a plunge into open-banking technology, announcing on Wednesday a partnership with Finicity, a Mastercard Inc.-owned open-banking platform provider. The deal comes hard on the heels of the partnership Fiserv announced last week with MX Technologies Inc. The latest deal …

Payments providers are increasingly resuming business-as-usual as the pandemic eases, but so are criminals. Losses from identity-fraud schemes, in which fraudsters use stolen payment credentials for their own gain, soared 79% last year to $24 billion, according to a study released Tuesday by Javelin Strategy & Research. Moreover, this so-called …

Unattended payments specialist Cantaloupe Inc. launched ePort Engage Combo, a new all-in-one card reader and telemeter, digital touchscreen, and payment platform that can be installed directly over existing bill acceptors.Payments provider Trust Payments has signed agreements with three independent sales organizations—Provident Advisor Group, DPS Card Services, and Card Dynamics—to sell Trust Payments’ new e-commerce …