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EBay Inc. confirmed on Monday that David Marcus, president of its PayPal Inc. unit, is leaving to take a job at social-network giant Facebook Inc. John Donahoe, chief executive of eBay, will run PayPal until a successor is found for Marcus, who will remain at PayPal until the end of …
Read More »Though Facing Slim Odds, A Merchant Group Takes Its Durbin Case to the Supreme Court
Arguing that a federal appeals court “disregarded the plain letter of the statute,” a group of merchants and merchant associations is preparing a request to the U.S. Supreme Court to review a case in which it is battling to overturn the Federal Reserve Board’s interpretation of the Durbin Amendment’s debit …
Read More »Growth Perks up on the ACH Network, Though Check-Based Payments Continue to Decline
The national automated clearing house network enjoyed its second-strongest first-quarter performance in the past five years, with 3.8% transaction growth year-over-year, according to statistics released Monday by NACHA, the network’s administrative agency. n The new growth energy comes as the 40-year-old electronic payments network readies a proposal to speed up …
Read More »Priority Payment Merges with Cynergy Data As ISO/Processor Consolidation Presses on
The merchant-acquiring business continued its consolidation trend on Wednesday with the news that Priority Payment Systems LLC has merged with Cynergy Data LLC. The deal, terms of which were not disclosed, has created an independent sales organization processing some $20 billion annually for 125,000 merchant clients. Comvest Partners, a West Palm …
Read More »Tens of Thousands of Merchants Use the Web To Find a Processor, But ISOs Fare Poorly
There’s at least $30 billion in annual volume up for grabs among merchants using the Web to seek out a processor. Trouble is, independent sales organizations are really lousy at Internet marketing, according to a report released this week. Indeed, ISOs, banks, and point-of-sale software vendors spend about $17 million …
Read More »Sberbank, Biggest Bank So Far to Adopt Host Card Emulation, Aims for 3 Million Users
The mobile-payments variant known as host card emulation captured its biggest financial-institution backer yet with a deal between Russia’s Sberbank and Sequent Software Inc. Sberbank will launch a commercial service “later this year” using HCE software from Mountain View, Calif.-based Sequent, an official with the bank tells Digital Transactions News. …
Read More »Isis Hits 20,000 Activations Per Day, Doubling Daily Rate from Previous Month
The Isis mobile-wallet consortium said Wednesday it is activating new wallets at the rate of 20,000 per day. That rate, achieved over the last 30 days, represents a doubling of the rate Isis saw in the previous 30-day period, the company said. The upbeat news from Isis comes as some …
Read More »Stockpile Emerges To Offer Digital Gift Cards Backed by Stock to ‘Everyday’ Consumers
A new type of gift card is set to debut this summer that will be backed not by cash but by shares of stock. The virtual card will come from a startup called Stockpile Inc., which has created a waiting list for interested potential accountholders and is planning to market …
Read More »U.S. Readiness for EMV at a Low Ebb Despite Looming Deadline, Report Warns
By John Stewart With a crucial deadline looming in 2015, the U.S. payments industry will have only partially converted to the Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip card standard by the end of that year. Indeed, it will likely take years to equip small merchants especially to accept EMV, according to a report …
Read More »Host Card Emulation Takes Another Step with Key Sequent Software Issuance Solution
Sequent Software Inc. on Tuesday launched a solution that will let card issuers take advantage of so-called host card emulation, a protocol that allows issuers to provision digital cards for mobile payments while bypassing the phone-based secure element. With the new solution, issuers will also be able to embed their …
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