Looking to attract more small businesses that just want to process online payments, e-commerce kingpin Amazon.com Inc. is rolling out a new, streamlined version of its 6-year-old Amazon Payments service. The new platform, which includes a simplified application programming interface, front-end widgets, and a testing “sandbox,” minimizes integration time by …
Read More »Groupon Crashes Traditional ISO Business with a Move into POS Terminals
The acquiring business, already fraught with rivalry, became even more competitive on Wednesday with an announcement from daily-deals giant Groupon Inc. that it will supply traditional point of sale terminals to merchants as part of a new initiative under its payments division. The Chicago-based company, which last year jumped into …
Read More »Shopify Launches Payments Service To Ease Online Sales for Small Sellers
Shopify Inc. hopes to lure small online sellers by the thousands to its e-commerce platform by making the typically vexatious business of taking payments as easy as possible. On Monday, the Ottawa-based company announced Shopify Payments, a service that lets Web merchants sign up to accept a broad range of …
Read More »Formed in Wake of Credit Card Settlement, Recovery Firm Uses ISOs to Sell Claims Service
With a federal judge’s crucial decision only weeks away, a company formed to help merchants collect their share of the massive credit card interchange settlement is recruiting independent sales organizations to reach eligible businesses. Baltimore-based Brownstone Recovery Group has signed up more than 10 ISOs so far, according to Scott …
Read More »Court Strikes Down Debit Pricing And Routing Rules, Orders Fed ‘Back to Drawing Board’
In one of the most dramatic developments of the year in the electronic-payments business, a federal judge on Wednesday struck down the Federal Reserve Board’s pricing and routing rules for debit card transactions, arguing the banking regulator misinterpreted federal law. The rules, which implemented the Durbin Amendment to the 2010 …
Read More »With Revenue Stuck in Neutral, First Data Looks to New Top Brass to Kickstart Growth
First Data Corp.’s net loss widened in the second quarter on overall revenue that barely budged from the year-ago period, the huge transaction processor reported on Tuesday. The results throw into relief questions swirling around the Altanta-based company about whether its new top brass can kick-start growth. The company’s $189 …
Read More »Green Dot Announces New Distribution, Marketing Deals for GoBank, Prepaid Cards
Fresh from the launch of its GoBank mobile-banking product, Green Dot Corp. on Tuesday announced new marketing and distribution deals not only for GoBank but also for its core prepaid card program. Green Dot cards will be sold through 20,000 more retail stores, including locations belonging to Dollar Tree, Dollar …
Read More »Durbin, Welch Urge Fed To Adopt Debit Caps That Look More Like the EU Proposal
Two powerful lawmakers on Friday wrote to the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board urging the central bank to scrap its debit card interchange caps and instead adopt limits in line with the more draconian regime proposed this week by the European Commission. In their letter to Fed Board chairman …
Read More »Debit Networks Offer EMV Compromise That Would Allow Visa, MasterCard Apps
A trade group representing most of the nation’s debit networks has agreed to allow EMV applications other than its own to work on chip cards in the United States. The new position taken by the Secure Remote Payment Council represents what the group calls a “major compromise” and opens the …
Read More »Looking to U.K.’s EMV Experience, A Consultancy Prods U.S. with a ‘Hot Poker’
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and EMV won’t be fully implemented in the United States for some time to come, but at least some foreign observers who have experienced nationwide deployment of the Europay-MasterCard-Visa chip card standard are starting to show impatience with EMV’s sluggish U.S. progress. Fearing a …
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