Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
By John Stewart Top executives in the acquiring business are accustomed to looking far into the future, but one near-term concern popped up repeatedly at this week’s Strategic Leadership conference in Scottsdale, Ariz.: How will merchants react when they get their first statements showing chargebacks for counterfeit card fraud? As …
Read More »Merchant Acquirer TransFirst Takes Another Stab at an IPO
Add TransFirst Holdings Inc. to the growing roster of payments companies turning to the publicly traded stock markets to raise cash. The big merchant acquirer late Friday announced it filed an S-1 registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering of stock. The filing, …
Read More »First Data Raises $2.5 Billion as it Re-Enters the Stock Market, but Investors Lukewarm
Processing titan First Data Corp.’s return to the stock market Thursday was met with a tepid response from investors in the Atlanta-based company. First Data, which turned to the market to raise money to pay off debt, priced its initial public offering late Wednesday at $16 per share, which …
Read More »Square Files for IPO; Heading for More Than $32 Billion in Charge Volume
After alerting the investment community in July that it intended to file for an initial public offering of stock, merchant processor Square Inc. on Wednesday finally went public with its plans. San Francisco-based Square, which first made a name for itself by providing mobile-payment services to tiny businesses and individual …
Read More »VeriFone Snaps Up Curb, a Taxi-Hailing and Payments App
VeriFone Systems Inc. reported Tuesday that it bought Curb, a taxi-hailing service that offers consumers an electronic hailing app. The move boosts San Jose, Calif.-based VeriFone’s involvement in taxis, which started almost 10 years ago, and complements Way2ride, a taxi-payment service VeriFone launched in 2013 to provide. The Curb …
Read More »Eye on Mobile: How the Phone Is Steadily Taking Over Online And P2P Payments
Two reports released Thursday point up the accelerating rate at which consumers are turning to a mobile device rather than a PC to pay an online merchant or another person. The news comes as major tech players like Apple Inc., Google Inc., PayPal Holdings Inc., and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. …
Read More »ATM Surcharges and Foreign Fees Are Up 4% to New Records, Bankrate Survey Finds
ATM surcharges rose 4% to an average of $2.88 this year from $2.77 in 2014, while foreign fees increased 3.8% to $1.64 from last year’s $1.58, Bankrate Inc. found in its latest annual study of checking account fees. Together, the two fees total $4.52, another new record and up 3.9% …
Read More »First Data Launches Its IPO With an Offering That Could Value Processor at $17.6 Billion
By John Stewart Payments-processing titan First Data Corp. on Thursday launched its long-awaited effort to go public with an initial offering of stock that would value the company at as much as $17.6 billion and raise as much as $3.2 billion. The IPO could well be the largest seen on …
Read More »After the Big Liability Shift: What’s Next for EMV?
In the four years since Visa Inc. announced the EMV liability shift would be Oct. 1, 2015, merchants, issuers, processors, and other parties have expended huge efforts to prepare for this day. But the real work—converting millions more merchants, issuing millions more chip cards, and educating merchants and consumers—is in …
Read More »Consumers Not Quite so Enamored With Debit Cards as Before, TSYS Study Finds
Debit cards are still Americans’ favorite payment type, but they’re not quite as popular as they were two years ago, according to new survey findings from Total System Services Inc. (TSYS). The payment processor’s fifth annual Consumer Payment Choice Study, which in June surveyed more than 1,000 consumers with at least …
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