Payments companies have sensed increasing regulatory pressure since the Biden Administration’s inauguration last year, and now experts who follow developments in Washington, D.C., are confirming it. After a relatively “light touch” during the Trump Administration, “the [regulatory] pendulum has come back this way” toward a harder look at payments practices, …
Read More »Eyeing the Contactless Market, MagTek Launches Its DynaFlex II And DynaProx Readers
Payments-technology provider MagTek Inc. on Tuesday launched the latest product on its DynaFlex platform, the DynaFlex II card reader, and also unveiled its DynaProx family of readers for transactions involving NFC mobile wallets as well as barcodes. The new technology follows a two-year span in which businesses have sought out …
Read More »Eye on ISOs: Shift4’s Airport Deal; Payroc Snaps up Iroquois Merchant Services
Ontario International Airport in California is adopting Shift4 Payments Inc.s’ VenueNext mobile point-of-sale technology to allow passengers to order and pay for food and merchandise using their mobile phones. The service includes new self-checkout technology that allows travelers to scan a UPC code, add it to a shopping cart, and …
Read More »Crypto, Gift Cards, And Even BNPL Come to Unattended Payments Via PayRange
Transactions on gift cards and cryptocurrency—and even buy now, pay later capability—are coming to commercial washers, dryers, and vending machines with an announcement Monday by PayRange Inc. that it will support the new payment methods. The Portland, Ore.-based company, which says it processes for more than half a million commercial …
Read More »U.S. Merchant Acquiring Volume Surpasses $9 Trillion Even As E-Commerce Slows
The 25 biggest U.S. merchant acquirers control about 90% of payment dollar volume, even as e-commerce may be losing some of its recent momentum, according to the latest ranking of U.S. merchant acquirers by The Strawhecker Group, released this week. Overall, U.S. acquirers processed more than $9 trillion in payment …
Read More »Losses From Stolen Identities Skyrocketed 79% to $24 Billion in 2021, a Javelin Study Finds
Payments providers are increasingly resuming business-as-usual as the pandemic eases, but so are criminals. Losses from identity-fraud schemes, in which fraudsters use stolen payment credentials for their own gain, soared 79% last year to $24 billion, according to a study released Tuesday by Javelin Strategy & Research. Moreover, this so-called …
Read More »Eye on Security: Panini Meets FBI Standards, And VGS Gets Set to Launch Card Tokens
Panini S.p.A., which has been expanding beyond its base in devices for image processing, said early Tuesday the Federal Bureau of Investigation has certified its fingerprint-authentication technology, called BioCred. The scanning technology meets image-quality specifications set by the FBI’s Appendix F standard, said to be the law-enforcement agency’s highest standard …
Read More »Eye on the Sky: CellPoint Signs Virgin Atlantic, And Garmin Unveils a New Smart Watch
The return of travel following the impact of the pandemic is testing airlines in various ways, not the least of which is their openness to payment methods beyond cards in what for them is a global market. That new emphasis, combined with a need to work with multiple acquirers, is …
Read More »As Regulators Examine BNPL, A Payments Industry Group Advises Caution
With the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau investigating the impact of buy now, pay later programs on consumers, the Electronic Transactions Association early Friday released a letter it hopes will help clarify the issues and help allay the regulator’s concerns about key issues such as debt accumulation, regulatory arbitrage, and data …
Read More »Mastercard Announces Account-to-Account Payment Tools Based on Open-Banking Assets
Mastercard Inc. early Wednesday said it will launch two new payments tools that rely on the card network’s rapidly growing stake in open banking and account-to-account transactions. The new digital tools, which Mastercard says will not be available until later this year, are expected to address risk and uncertainty in …
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