Consumers are making more debit card transactions without the physical card, and fraudsters are taking notice, according to a major study released Thursday. Transactions such as e-commerce payments, push payments, and peer-to-peer transfers using the accounts backing debit cards, but not the plastic itself, are rising dramatically, according to the …
Read More »It’s Hard to Beat Amazon, And That’s Putting Pressure on the Providers That Serve Small Sellers
Big merchants like Amazon.com Inc. are celebrated for virtually friction-free transaction flows, and now that’s putting pressure on the point-of-sale vendors that serve small businesses. That’s because clients want the same kind of experience for their customers, but don’t know how to go about it, a panel of experts said …
Read More »Now That First Data Is Part of Fiserv, Strategies Emerge to Reinforce Banks’ Role in Payments
In what may be the biggest anticlimax in their careers, employees at First Data Corp. will walk into their offices Monday morning as employees of Fiserv Inc. And if Fiserv chief executive Jeffery Yabuki’s ambitions prove fruitful, the combined company will play a leading role in fending off nonbanks like …
Read More »P2P Sizzles for PayPal, Though a Snarled Integration Delays Its Entry Into Bill Pay
PayPal Holdings Inc.’s payments juggernaut shows no signs of weakening, but the company has found its latest product integrations bedeviled by slowdowns, forcing it to postpone some expected revenue. One such integration with bill-payment specialist Paymentus Corp. is a crucial one because it will allow PayPal to enter an enormous, …
Read More »Forget the Rent. Zelle Starts to Claim More Everyday Transactions
The Zelle peer-to-peer payments network is starting to click for the smaller, everyday transfers it was designed to handle. Early Warning Services LLC, the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based banking-technology company that runs the 2-year-old network, reported on Tuesday that Zelle handled $44 billion in volume in the second quarter on 171 million …
Read More »A Survey Exposes Consumers’ Ambivalence on Voice-Activated Payments
Whether most consumers will ultimately use Alexa or Siri or some other voice-activated device to make purchases may depend crucially on how much money is at risk. As it turns out, slightly more than half of U.S. consumers would be comfortable using the technology to pay for relatively small-ticket goods …
Read More »Equifax’s Tab for Its Big 2017 Data Breach Will Total at Least $671 Million
Equifax Inc., which in 2017 sustained a data breach that potentially exposed sensitive information related to 148 million files, on Monday announced what that massive intrusion will cost the company. The Atlanta-based credit-reporting agency said it will pay $671 million as part of an agreement to settle multidistrict class-action litigation …
Read More »AmEx Posts a 6% Jump in Global Discount Revenue As Overall Revenue Rises 8%
American Express Co. on Friday reported worldwide discount revenue of $6.58 billion for the quarter ended June 30, up 6% year-over-year. Discount revenue accounted for fully 61% of total revenue net of interest expense, which came to $10.84 billion, up 8%, the New York City-based card network reported. AmEx’s worldwide …
Read More »Despite Lawmakers’ Hostility, Patience Could Pay off for Facebook And Libra
Facebook Inc. and its proposed Libra cryptocurrency took a beating this week on Capitol Hill, but the outlook for the new coin—and its Calibra wallet—may be more nuanced than that reception would seem to indicate. The skepticism toward Libra was bipartisan, with Senators and Representatives of both major parties raking …
Read More »Eye On the Point of Sale: Visa Agrees to Buy Payworks; ACI Signs up Worldpay
Visa Inc. said Wednesday it has acquired Payworks GmbH, a Munich-based developer of cloud-based point-of-sale payment-gateway software. Visa intends to integrate Payworks’ technology with that of another Visa property, CyberSource, and offer the combined product to merchants and acquirers. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. The combined offering will …
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