Prepaid card provider Green Dot Corp. on Thursday announced a test with ride-sharing service Uber in which Uber drivers can be paid instantly via deposits into Green Dot’s subsidiary bank. Drivers for San Francisco-based Uber normally are paid once a week via direct deposit into financial accounts on file with …
Read More »First Data Continues Streamlining Operations With Facilities Changes
First Data Corp. recently closed one office in Florida and plans to close a bigger one in New York next year, but the company still added 1,000 employees to its worldwide head count last year. Newsday, the newspaper of Long Island, N.Y., reported Tuesday that First Data filed a report …
Read More »Venmo Blogs About Security Policies After Keywords Trigger Transaction Delays
PayPal Holdings Inc.’s popular Venmo person-to-person payments service posted a review of the company’s anti-money-laundering and related security policies Sunday in the wake of transaction reviews triggered by certain keywords in Venmo messages that have slowed down the payments process. “There has been recent discussion around specific keywords associated with …
Read More »Coinstar and Redbox Parent Firm Outerwall Looking at Strategic Alternatives
Its original Coinstar coin-counting business long overshadowed by its once-booming but now fading Redbox DVD and video-game rental business, Outerwall Inc. on Monday announced that it had hired investment banker Morgan Stanley & Co. “to explore strategic and financial alternatives” for Outerwall shareholders. The company simultaneously announced that would double …
Read More »VeriFone’s U.S. EMV Focus Shifts From Large Retailers to Other Merchant Sectors
Multilane retailers provided much of the revenue lift that payment-acceptance hardware and software provider VeriFone Systems Inc. has enjoyed for the past couple of years as the U.S. prepped for the Oct. 1, 2015, EMV liability shift, but many of the big retailers have now completed their EMV purchases. Yet …
Read More »The Fed’s Payment System Improvement Task Forces Give a Progress Report
Some two-and-a-half years after it started, the Federal Reserve’s project to make U.S. payments faster and more secure is laying the groundwork for private industry to come up with something better than the mishmash that U.S. payments are today, but tangible results still could be years away. Fed officials and others …
Read More »ACH Transaction Growth Cooled Slightly but Still Remained Strong in 2015’s Fourth Quarter
The automated clearing house network’s strong growth run continued in 2015’s fourth quarter, exceeding 5% for the fourth quarter in a row. ACH governing body NACHA recently reported that total network volume hit 4.98 billion transactions, up 5.5% from 4.72 billion in 2014’s fourth quarter. While strong, the growth rate …
Read More »Chargebacks May Spur Small-Business Holdouts To Get EMV Terminals
Nothing like an unexpected chargeback to turn a recalcitrant merchant into an EMV believer. According to new survey results from Javelin Strategy and Research, only 8% of small and so-called micro businesses queried in February who didn’t accept EMV chip cards cited as a reason the lack of a …
Read More »MasterCard’s Possible VocaLink Buy Could Shake Up the U.S. Faster-Payments Scene
MasterCard Inc. reportedly wants to acquire VocaLink Ltd., operator of the United Kingdom’s Faster Payments system, for just under £1 billion ($1.4 billion), according to reports in the British media Thursday. Such a deal, if consummated, could shake up the budding faster-payments movement in the U.S., where VocaLink is building …
Read More »Discount Grocer Aldi Reverses Course and Now Accepts Credit Cards
The prominent, slightly self-effacing graphic on discount grocery-store chain Aldi Inc.’s home page says it all: “OMG! We FINALLY Accept Credit Cards!” Indeed, Batavia, Ill.-based Aldi is believed to be the last major grocery holdout in accepting general purpose credit cards, which typically cost merchants more to accept than the …
Read More »