Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
It’s common for consumers who use a recurring service to designate a credit or debit card that the service provider can charge each month. With the automated clearing house, this is much less common. Dwolla Inc. says that’s because it’s too difficult and time-consuming for most businesses to set up …
Read More »Apple Pay Survey Shows Flat-Lining Adoption and Usage, but Most Users Like It
A new study of smart-phone users shows awareness and usage of Apple Pay is slightly down from last spring, providing yet more evidence that the much-touted mobile-payments service from Apple Inc. hasn’t set the world on fire. On the plus side, the December survey of 1,279 consumers for First Annapolis …
Read More »Longer Checkouts for EMV Don’t Seem To Be Fazing Consumers in the Early Going
When the U.S. rollout of EMV cards started in earnest last year, many experts predicted consumers would soon tire of the time-consuming chip-reading routine, putting pressure on the payments industry to usher in contactless EMV and more mobile wallets. But that’s not happening, at least not all that much and …
Read More »A Venmo In-App Service And a First Data Deal Help Expand PayPal’s Merchant Reach
On Wednesday, PayPal Holdings Inc. made it clear it hasn’t given up on expanding its reach with merchants beyond processing e-commerce payments. The company announced a new in-app payments initiative for its popular Venmo peer-to-peer payments app, a move that follows a recent agreement with First Data Corp. that furthers …
Read More »With an Improved Price Performance, Bitcoin Faces a Debate Over How to Grow
The Dow Jones Industrial Average has skidded about 8% since the end of 2015, putting a scare in investors and prompting talk of everything from a market correction to another recession. Unnoticed, however, is that the price of the digital currency Bitcoin has followed an almost identical path, dropping approximately …
Read More »For the First Time, Smart Phones Beat Tablets for Share of Online Transactions, Adyen Says
For e-commerce merchants, the screen is getting smaller very quickly, according to the latest quarterly report from payments company Adyen. Some 17.5% of all e-commerce transactions on Adyen’s platform in the fourth quarter were made with a smart phone, compared to 16% with a tablet, the Netherlands-based company said late …
Read More »AmEx Plans $1 Billion in Cost Cuts As Part of an Effort to Rebound From a Sub-Par 2015
In 2015, American Express Co. had a bad year. Hit hard by competitive pressures on merchant fees and cobrand-card returns, as well as swooning gasoline prices, the big card network on Thursday reported a 4% decline in revenue net of interest expense for the year to $32.8 billion, its first …
Read More »Flywire’s Deal to Buy Canada’s ScholarFX Adds to Its Growing Niche in Tuition Payments
It’s often neglected in the payments business, but one of the fastest-growing markets is processing cross-border transactions for college and post-graduate students studying abroad. The business is dominated by wire transfers, but a startup called Flywire, which has served the market for more than four years, is enjoying fast growth. …
Read More »Eye on the POS: VeriFone Snags AJB, Ingenico’s U.S. Growth, HP’s Retail Thrust
With the National Retail Federation’s annual trade show kicking off Monday in New York City, a number of payments companies tried to get a head start on the show by releasing news over the weekend. Much of it concerns developments for the physical point of sale. Here’s a wrap-up of …
Read More »First Data Unveils Clover Go, an EMV-Capable Card Reader for Smart Phones, Tablets
First Data Corp. on Friday said it is joining the market for card readers that plug into mobile phones. Its latest entry in its Clover line of point-of-sale technology is Clover Go, a credit and debit card reader that connects to smart phones and tablets via the mobile device’s headphone …
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