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 …
Read More »Ultra-Low Conversion Rates for Online And Mobile Commerce Evoke Some Suggestions
With more and more consumers getting accustomed to shopping online and on mobile devices, merchants are losing more and more sales to checkout abandonment. “Conversion rates aren’t where we’d like to see them,” said Joe Walent, a senior analyst at Mercator Advisory Group, a payments consultancy. Walent, who spoke Tuesday …
Read More »Contactless in the U.K. Reaches 1 Billion Transactions, Tripling the Nation’s 2014 Volume
Confronted with pokey EMV transactions, consumers and merchants in the United States may be eagerly looking for the contactless revolution to start. But in the United Kingdom, the wave-and-pay method is already picking up quite a head of steam. Consumers in the U.K. performed just over 1 billion contactless transactions …
Read More »Android Pay Cardless ATM Transactions Coming to BofA; PayPal Sets Big Goals
Cardless ATM technology that enables consumers to make cash withdrawals is now available via Android Pay at select Bank of America Corp. locations, the banking giant announced Wednesday at Google’s annual IO conference. BofA says the service has initially been available at some ATMs in Boston, Charlotte, N.C., New York …
Read More »While Funding Cools for Payments Generally, Bitcoin And Blockchain Reap a Rich Harvest
Venture funding for payments companies may have slowed dramatically in recent months, but that’s not the case across the board. Bitcoin and blockchain startups in particular uncorked a geyser of cash in the first quarter, with dollars invested totaling $173 million on 39 deals, according to data released this week …
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