Square Inc. is getting into the photography business as yet another way to add auxiliary services beyond payments designed to attract and retain merchants. The new service, dubbed Square Photo Studio, enables merchants, or sellers in Square’s lingo, to ship products to a Square studio in Brooklyn, N.Y., where they …
Read More »Hearing Set on Massachusetts Bills That Would Repeal the State’s Cashless-Store Ban
A hearing is set for today on two bills pending in the Massachusetts Legislature that would repeal the state’s decades-old ban on cashless stores. If passed, the bipartisan legislation, which is drawing fire from the ATM industry, would put Massachusetts at odds with efforts this year in a number of …
Read More »Volume on eBay’s New Managed-Payments Platform Grows
Online marketplace eBay Inc. saw further growth on its new, post-PayPal managed-payments platform in the second quarter despite a decline in gross merchandise volume. San Jose, Calif.-based eBay on Wednesday said the platform accounted for more than $270 million in GMV in the June-ending quarter, up 24% from the first …
Read More »In the Post-EMV World, Online Fraud May Decline, but Watch Out for Email Compromises
Fraud-control executives and researchers predicted card-not-present fraud would boom when the U.S. converted to EMV chip cards a few years ago, and, sure enough, it did. But if the experiences of other countries that adopted EMV before the U.S. are any guide, Americans can take relief in that CNP fraud …
Read More »Payment Stocks Rebounded in June After a Month in Negative Territory
Stocks of publicly traded payments companies returned to positive territory in June to beat the major market indexes once again after going negative in May. Payments firms also exceeded the market in the year’s second quarter and first half, according to an analysis released Wednesday. A basket of 29 payment …
Read More »Consumer Groups Call for a Moratorium on Libra Until ‘Profound Questions’ Are Answered
Some 33 consumer and public-policy groups sent a letter Tuesday to five Congressional committees and federal regulators asking for a moratorium on the Facebook Inc.-backed Libra cryptocurrency. “We call on Congress and regulators to impose a moratorium on Facebook’s Libra and related plans until the profound questions raised by the …
Read More »JCPenney Again Accepting Mobile Payments, but Technology Upgrade Is Yet To Come
After about two months of not accepting mobile wallets, J.C. Penney Co. Inc. this month quietly resumed accepting them, apparently by firing up its old contactless-payment acceptance system. The Plano, Texas-based department-store chain with about 860 locations had turned off its contactless system that used an older technology known as …
Read More »Visa To Acquire Rambus’s Token and Electronic-Ticketing Businesses for $75 Million
In a move to expand its tokenization services, Visa Inc. announced Tuesday that it has a deal to buy the token and smart-ticketing businesses of Rambus Inc., a Silicon Valley chip and software provider. The purchase price is $75 million in cash, according to a regulatory filing from Sunnyvale, Calif.-based …
Read More »Bill Ready, a Key Player in PayPal’s Rise, To Leave Company by Year’s End
PayPal Holdings Inc. announced late Thursday that its chief operating officer William J. “Bill” Ready will leave by the end of 2019 after six years with the online-payments leader. The unexpected departure of its number 2 executive cast some uncertainty over San Jose, Calif.-based PayPal. In mid-morning trading, its stock …
Read More »Tariff Pressure Takes Aim at Payment Equipment Once Again
While legislators and regulators focused much of their attention on the Facebook-backed Libra cryptocurrency this week, tariffs on Chinese-made goods re-emerged in Washington as a threat that could raise prices for merchants and merchant acquirers. The Electronic Transactions Association payments trade group filed comments with the Office of the United States …
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