More than 80% of the fare value collected by the Dallas Area Rapid Transit System at its ticket windows and on its buses comes in the form of cash, so next spring the transit agency will start offloading that cash onto local 7-Elevens and other stores. DART and PayNearMe Inc., …
Read More »After Eight Months of Testing, MCX Postpones CurrentC Rollout, Lays off 30 Staffers
After eight months of experimentation in Columbus, Ohio, Merchant Customer Exchange LLC on Monday issued a statement from chief executive Brian Mooney announcing it is putting off a national rollout of its CurrentC mobile-payments service to an unspecified date. Mooney added that the Boston-based company, formed in 2012 by many …
Read More »Payments Network Bogeyman Durbin Unleashes Double-Barreled Inquiry Into EMV
U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., made his name in the payments business with an amendment to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act that put a cap on the debit card interchange big banks can earn. Now, he’s investigating the nation’s rocky EMV rollout with separate inquiries concerning snarled certification queues and the …
Read More »Wendy’s Goes Public With Data Breach, And Cautions About Current And Possible Suits
The Wendy’s Co. admitted publicly Wednesday that a point-of-sale system at “fewer than 300” of its franchised restaurants in North America had been affected by malware, starting last fall. In a quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Dublin, Ohio-based hamburger chain also said it has worked with …
Read More »They May Account for a Sliver of Acquiring, But ISVs And VARs Are Poised for Fast Growth
For all the talk about independent software vendors and value-added resellers as an alternative channel for acquirers to sign up new merchants, the ISV/VAR share of the market is actually quite small, according to research released last week by Annapolis, Md.-based First Annapolis Consulting. The research does indicate, however, that …
Read More »Consolidation Heats up in Carrier Billing With Bango’s $3.5 Million Deal for BilltoMobile
The direct carrier billing business has been consolidating for the last few years, and on Monday the latest deal confirmed that surviving players are still willing to pay for volume. London-based carrier biller Bango said it had acquired a major rival, Danal Inc.’s BilltoMobile service, from San Jose, Calif.-based Danal, …
Read More »While Still Volatile, Bitcoin’s Price Generally Moves Upward As Blockchain Interest Rises
While the payments industry has been buzzing lately with talk about the blockchain, Bitcoin has been reaching pricing levels it hasn’t seen in more than a year. The rally comes amid fresh optimism for a solution to a vexing capacity problem and for the blockchain itself, the distributed ledger that …
Read More »Online Merchants Are Beating Fraud, But the Gains Are Costly, CyberSource Study Reveals
So far, online merchants are winning the battle against fraud, but the gains are coming at a high cost, according to the latest annual fraud study from CyberSource Corp., set for release next week with results for 2015. The progress also comes as card-not-present merchants prepare for an expected onslaught …
Read More »Eye on Merchant Funding: Shopify Enters the Fray, and Citi Invests in Cloud Funder BlueVine
It may have started with the likes of PayPal Holdings Inc. and Square Inc., but it isn’t stopping there. Having made their mark in merchant processing, high-tech payments firms are increasingly turning their attention to the business of offering funding to the merchants they serve. The move is bringing them …
Read More »Venmo And One Touch Help Buoy PayPal While Big Merchants Squeeze Its Margins
When it comes to mobile payments, few operators can equal PayPal Holdings Inc., a fact the company underlined on Wednesday when it reported mobile volume reached $21 billion in the first quarter, up fully 54% year-over-year. But casting a shadow over the good news was a continuing downward trend in …
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