Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
The Durbin Amendment may be best known for its stringent ceiling on debit card interchange, but merchants are discovering that another part of the law that requires transaction-routing choices can be just as effective as rate caps in controlling processing costs. Giant Eagle Inc., a Pittsburgh-based supermarket chain operating nearly …
Read More »With October 2015 11 Months Away, POS Terminal Exec Doubts Mass Merchant EMV Adoption
Just because merchants have until next October to install terminals capable of processing chip cards and avoid shouldering liability for counterfeit card transactions doesn’t mean most of them will have done so by that date. Many experts, and a number of merchants themselves, have made that point. But major terminal …
Read More »MCX Chief Davidson Strikes Defiant Tone While Touting Benefits of CurrentC’s Wallet
By John Stewart Merchant Customer Exchange LLC (MCX) has launched its CurrentC mobile-payment service with “thousands” of consumers in “several American cities,” the program’s chief executive said on Wednesday. The “consumers,” employees of retailers that make up the Needham, Mass.-based MCX consortium, are part of a pilot for the fledgling …
Read More »Online Lending Platforms Ramp up to Fill Small-Merchant Void Left by Banks
With financial institutions lending less to small businesses, new, technology-based companies are moving into merchant lending to fill the void. This is a market typically served by so-called merchant cash-advance firms, companies that lend money in the form of advances against a merchant’s expected credit card volume. In many cases, …
Read More »Tech Firms See Opportunity As Remote Capture Leads to Rising Problem of Bad Check Images
For the past decade, image exchange has been one of the undisputed success stories of electronic payments—so much so, in fact, that nearly all banking and retail executives take it for granted that paper checks will clear as images and funds will likely settle the same or next day. But …
Read More »Issuers’ Apple Pay Pact Assigns Remarkable Authority to Card Networks As Well As Apple
Issuers signing up to have their cards included in the Apple Pay wallet may benefit from all the hype Apple Inc. is generating for the new mobile-payment service. But behind the scenes, the 500 or so financial institutions that have enlisted in the program so far are also signing up …
Read More »Apple Embeds NFC in Its New iPad Air 2, Stirring Speculation About Its Mobile POS Plans
When Apple Inc. officially launched its Apple Pay mobile-payments service on Monday, all eyes were on the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, the smart phones that carry the near-field communication (NFC) technology that makes Apple Pay work in stores. But now it turns out Apple has also embedded an …
Read More »With New Perkwave App, Harbortouch Leverages Apple Pay for a Pay-at-Table Solution
With Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay mobile-payments platform launching Monday, many in the payments business are focused on the contactless technology’s potential to change in-store payments behavior. But Apple Pay works within apps, as well, opening up an even wider variety of markets for Apple, including sit-down restaurants. Harbortouch, an Allentown, …
Read More »Apple Pay Works, But It Can’t Speed up Lines of Non-Users
The big news about my test today of Apple Pay, the contactless payment scheme for use with Apple Inc. smart phones and tablets, is that there was no big news. It worked. Each transaction on the first day of availability went through quickly, with a notification popping up on …
Read More »Apple Pay Goes Live Monday, As Apple, Samsung Join ETA
The date is set. Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay mobile-payment scheme, now with more than 500 banks supporting it, launches Monday, the Cupertino, Calif.-based company announced Thursday. Apple Pay is a payment scheme that has two components. One, available only in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, uses a near-field …
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