The broader business of point-of-sale technology has many concerns that include payments but aren’t limited to that function. These days, though, it may seem that payments—and especially EMV—is all this business talks about. This was certainly the case this week at RetailNOW, a four-day conference in Orlando, Fla., produced by …
Read More »As MCX Plans Pilot for Late August, Observers Ponder Fate of Its CurrentC Wallet
By John Stewart After a three-year gestation period, the Merchant Customer Exchange’s CurrentC mobile-payment service is planning to launch a pilot in Columbus, Ohio, during the last week of August, a source with knowledge of the matter tells Digital Transactions News. The pilot will involve locations belonging to a handful …
Read More »Five Years Later, What’s the Bottom Line on Durbin? Well, It’s Complicated
By John Stewart Five years after it became the law of the land, the Durbin Amendment remains as controversial as it was then, with virtually no agreement in sight on such questions as whether merchants have cut prices in response to interchange savings or whether consumers have paid more for …
Read More »Apple Pay To Hit 1.5 Million U.S. Acceptance Locations by Year’s End, Apple’s CEO Says
Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay mobile-payments service will soon more than double the 700,000 acceptance locations it had this spring, according to figures the Cupertino, Calif.-based computer and smart-phone maker released Tuesday. “We’re on track for Apple Pay acceptance at over 1.5 million U.S. locations by the end of 2015,” Apple chief …
Read More »MWAA Wrapup: Where ISOs Should Butter Their Bread; The Fed on Faster Payments
The annual MidWest Acquirers Conference concluded Thursday in Chicago with a series of sessions addressing several hot-button payments issues. Here’s a rundown of the more salient remarks: —Whither the independent sales organization? With the fundamentals of the acquiring business rapidly turning towards mobile and cloud-based technology, ISOs are finding themselves …
Read More »A China Gambit And Boom in Studying Abroad Open Big Opportunities for peerTransfer
Students from outside the United States are flooding the country to attend colleges, universities, even secondary schools, and that presents a payments problem for them and their families. Wire transfers, the typical way for foreigners to pay tuition and other fees, are cumbersome and expensive. Enter peerTransfer Corp., a 4-year-old …
Read More »Schulman Sets Goal to Boost Usage As PayPal Swallows Xoom, Expands One Touch Checkout
On the eve of his company’s separation from long-time parent eBay Inc., PayPal Inc.’s new chief executive on Thursday let it be known he intends to dramatically boost usage among PayPal’s 169 million active accounts by stressing single-touch checkouts and new capabilities like Xoom, the online-remittance service it is buying …
Read More »An Exception to the Rule, SECU Issues PINs for Its EMV Cards, But Usage Is Another Story
The United States appears to be making steady progress in its conversion to the EMV chip card standard. Some 120 million chip cards were issued by the end of last year, a figure expected to balloon to 600 million by the end of 2015, according to the EMV Migration Forum, …
Read More »Bitcoin Revisits $300-Plus Territory as Greece Grapples With Stringent Bailout Plans
The price of Bitcoin, which has languished under $300 for more than six months, briefly shot past that milestone over the weekend, only to close lower in trading later Sunday. The digital currency, which traded well over $600 a year ago before beginning a slide that saw it plunge below …
Read More »Not Your Father’s ISO: How Tech Is Forcing Acquirers To Make a Crucial Choice
By John Stewart When the Internet, and then mobile and cloud-based technology, began to radically change the acquiring business, some independent sales organizations thought they could adapt by becoming software companies without changing the way they do business. They were wrong, and that mistake is costing them dearly, argues Rick …
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