Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Venture-capital and private-equity investors are on pace to meet or exceed the $753 million they infused into the payments industry in 2011, the most since the $1.4 billion they invested in payments in 2001. Through the first three quarters of 2012, venture-capital and private-equity investors pumped $711 million into startup …
Read More »Loaded with Debt, ISO Pipeline Data Files for Bankruptcy Protection
Citing a weak economic climate and business setbacks, independent sales organization Pipeline Data Inc. and its affiliates on Monday filed for Chapter 11 protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. Pipeline hopes to sell itself as a going concern with the help of an investment bank. Alpharetta, Ga.-based Pipeline …
Read More »Pressing Acquisition Strategy, TSYS Uses ProPay Deal to Get into Mobile Acceptance
Total System Services Inc.’s announcement late last week that it has agreed to buy ProPay Inc. is the latest chapter in TSYS’s strategy of bulking up its position in the merchant-acquiring business through acquisitions. The deal will also hand the Columbus, Ga.-based processor a key stake in the rapidly growing …
Read More »The Federal Trade Commission Sniffs Around a Visa Debit Gateway
Already under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice for its competitive response to the Durbin Amendment debit card regulations in 2010’s Dodd-Frank Act, Visa Inc. is now getting scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission about a gateway service that routes transactions to PIN-debit networks. Visa disclosed on Friday in …
Read More »CreditCall Pushes ‘EMV-in-the-Cloud’ to Ease U.S. Adoption As Readiness Deadlines Near
With deadlines fast approaching for U.S. merchants, acquirers, and other payments players to adopt the Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip card standard, vendors are stepping forward with ideas to simplify readiness. One of the latest of these is a concept that asks why chip transactions can’t be managed by remote servers—why, in …
Read More »As Visa Launches its V.me Wallet, It Wins Uptake Among Small Banks And Credit Unions
As it turns out, digital wallets aren’t just a creature of the big banks. With Visa Inc.’s announcement on Tuesday that it has made its V.me digital wallet commercially available, the world’s largest payments network said some 53 financial institutions have signed on to offer the product to customers. Among …
Read More »BAMS Breaks into Mobile Acceptance with a Service that Eschews Aggregation
Just when observers might have thought the mobile-acceptance market couldn’t get more crowded, merchant processor Bank of America Merchant Services LLC on Tuesday announced a service called Mobile Pay on Demand. And while the service includes the now familiar card-reading dongle for attachment to a smart phone, it also features …
Read More »Boston Rail Commuters Get the Nation’s First Smart-Phone Fare App
While some transit agencies are in the process of implementing or mulling fare systems that will accept general-purpose contactless chip cards, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and vendor Masabi US Ltd. on Monday rolled out a smart-phone ticketing app for Boston commuter-rail passengers that requires no big capital investment in …
Read More »Looming Holiday Season Promises Hefty Lift in Closed-Loop Prepaid Loads, Report Says
Closed-loop gift cards can expect to see an increase of more than 5% in holiday load volume over 2011’s loads, according to a new forecast from Mercator Advisory Group Inc., which researches the prepaid card industry. Mercator predicts loads on closed-loop gift cards will hit $43.2 billion from Nov. 1 …
Read More »Judge Gives Preliminary OK to the Controversial Credit Card Interchange Settlement
To the dismay of retailers but the joy of the card networks and bank defendants, U.S. District Judge John Gleeson on Friday gave preliminary approval to the controversial settlement of credit card interchange litigation announced July 13. The National Retail Federation, the leading retail-industry trade group and an outspoken foe …
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