Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. have made it plain in recent years they’re interested in something much bigger than card payments. On Monday afternoon, Visa underscored its own determination to be the network for the world’s payments economy by announcing it will lay out fully $5.3 billion to buy Plaid …
Read More »Many ATM Operators Will Blow Tomorrow’s Upgrade Deadline, But Will That Matter Much?
ATM operators on Monday are literally on the eve of a critical upgrade deadline that many have not met, but some industry sources at least say the situation is far from disastrous. Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday will stop supporting its Windows 7 operating system, which runs most bank-owned ATMs in …
Read More »Samsung SDS And Syniverse Partner on a Common Mobile-Payments Platform for ‘Anyone With a Phone’
A major enterprise software company and a mobile-technology provider late on Thursday announced an agreement to develop a service they say will provide a universal connection to mobile wallets and “simplify mobile payments for anyone with a phone.” The proposed service will combine application programming interface technology from software vendor …
Read More »Mobeewave And Samsung Leverage Contactless With Fast Onboarding for No-Dongle Acceptance
For years, payments providers like Square Inc. have mined the small- and micro-merchant market by providing inexpensive and simple attachments, or so-called dongles, that hook up to smart phones and can be used to swipe or read the chips on cards. Now comes the next step: card acceptance using no …
Read More »Fingerprint ID Dominates Authentication, But Facial Recognition Is Growing Fast
With payments fraud growing every year, the pressure is on in markets worldwide to adopt more sophisticated technology to verify the identity of mobile users. Against that backdrop, the winning technology is fingerprint recognition, with facial-recognition systems presenting a fast-growing alternative, according to the latest study from United Kingdom-based Juniper …
Read More »For Bitcoin, 2019 Was a Bit Less Wild, But Volatility Still Haunts the World’s Biggest Digital Currency
Bitcoin entered 2020 on a high note but remains a volatile cryptocurrency, both in value and in transaction cost. That volatility can reward savvy users but continues to hinder the leading cryptocoin’s usefulness as a payment method. The coin exited 2019 with a value exceeding $7,000, roughly double what it …
Read More »New Fed Data Underscores How Far Electronic Payments Have Eaten Into Checks
It’s no secret that electronic payment methods have systematically eaten away at check volume in the United States, but now new data from the Federal Reserve shows just how far that trend has gone. A total of 16 billion checks were written in 2018 for a total value of $26.2 …
Read More »It’s Official: Same-Day ACH Gets a Third Settlement Window, Effective March 2021
In a move that could have wide-ranging implications for a variety of payments, the Federal Reserve on Monday announced it will support a third settlement window each day for same-day automated clearing house transactions. The later settlement time, which ACH rule-making authority Nacha and a number of banks have long …
Read More »Point-of-Sale Chip Transactions Exceeded Non-Chip Payments in 2018, Fed Data Show
Chip-based transactions at the point of sale totaled more than non-chip payments for the first time in 2018, just three years after the United States began in earnest to convert payment cards and point-of-sale devices to the EMV chip standard, according to the latest Federal Reserve Payments Study, released Thursday. …
Read More »PayPal Scores an Historic First With the Completion of Its Deal for China’s Gopay
PayPal Holdings Inc. officially opened the door to a vast market for payments on Thursday with the closing of its deal for 70% of the equity in China’s Guofubao Information Technology Co. Ltd., better known as Gopay. The Peoples Bank of China had already okayed the deal, for which terms were …
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