Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Even the most fervent advocate of EMV would have to admit the U.S conversion to chip cards has been a rocky one, especially for merchants. On Thursday, Visa Inc. announced a four-part plan it clearly hopes will remedy at least some of the more acute headaches, including certification backlogs and …
Read More »Volatility Works in Bitcoin’s Favor As the Digital Currency’s Value Surges to a Two-Year High
Long-time payments players who like to scoff at Bitcoin as an unproven payments instrument will have to reckon with the robust vote of confidence buyers and sellers of the 7-year-old digital currency have given it over the past few days. Bitcoin’s U.S. dollar value breached the $700 level late Sunday …
Read More »Mobile, Breaches, Gift Cards, In-Store Pickup Among Trends Driving Online Fraud
Forecasters have long predicted that the U.S. payments market’s move to EMV chip cards for in-person transactions will drive criminals into e-commerce fraud. Now data is emerging to show the nuances these fraudsters are exploiting, and how the rise in online fraud is hardly limited to the U.S. market. In …
Read More »Did a May Meeting With Durbin Staffers Prompt Visa to Back off on Its New Fee?
The payments industry may never know for sure what prompted Visa Inc. to back off on a potentially lucrative new fee aimed at issuers planning to defect to other networks. But a clue to the decision emerged Wednesday when U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin’s office issued a statement celebrating the move …
Read More »Following Its Decision to Put off a Rollout, MCX to Shut Down Its CurrentC Pilot on June 28
When the Merchant Customer Exchange LLC announced last month it is postponing a rollout of its CurrentC pilot in Columbus, Ohio, observers suspected the news did not bode well for the merchant-controlled mobile wallet. On Monday, those suspicions were confirmed as MCX told CurrentC account holders in an email that …
Read More »Durbin’s Latest Salvo Challenges a New Visa Fee, But Visa Says It Has Dropped It
Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., the author of the fee-capping Durbin Amendment, is well-known as a champion of merchants, but now he’s taking up the cause of small banks and credit unions. Durbin on Tuesday sent a letter to Visa Inc. chief executive Charles Scharf asking for information about a new …
Read More »As the mPOS Revolution Spreads to More Merchants, Players Must Build Scale Fast
The mobile point-of-sale revolution started in North America with smart-phone readers from startups like Square Inc. and established software houses like Intuit Inc., but it’s now a global phenomenon with broad implications for entrenched players and newcomers alike, according to research released Monday. Indeed, mobile POS gear—chiefly phones or tablets …
Read More »You’ve Heard of Honor-All-Cards. Now Retailers Are Battling Honor-All-Wallets
The latest battle between merchants and the major card brands has been brewing behind the scenes for months but went public Thursday when an advocacy group for big-box retailers charged that a new twist on network rules is slowing the progress of mobile payments. The controversy involves regulations long maintained …
Read More »How Are the ‘Pays’ Doing? Latest Research Says Usage Is Limited, But Users Are Happy
By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Ever since Apple Pay debuted in 2014, payments pundits have wondered how fast mobile payments would catch on with consumers. The near-simultaneous arrival of two rivals, Android Pay and Samsung Pay, last fall only made the question more urgent. And now data is emerging that indicates …
Read More »Manual Reviews And False Positives, Costly Scourges of Online Commerce, Are on the Rise
U.S. e-commerce merchants are struggling with more fraud, but they’re also contending with two related problems that are on the rise and costing them plenty of time and money—manual reviews and false rejections, also known as false positives. That’s according to two studies, one released on Wednesday and the other …
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