Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Online-payments provider Skrill Group has a new owner. United Kingdom-based Optimal Payments Plc is buying London-based Skrill for 1.1 billion euros (U.S. $1.2 billion), Optimal announced Monday. Both companies provide digital-wallet services, with Skrill specializing in wallets for online-gambling users, e-commerce and money transfers. Skrill also offers a payment gateway and …
Read More »Plenti Offers Cross-Merchant Rewards—But Will Consumers Use It?
When the Plenti loyalty program—announced Wednesday by American Express Co.—debuts this spring, it will mark the first time a U.S. consumer-rewards program on a national scale enabled points to be earned and used across multiple merchants. The inaugural group of merchants includes AT&T, ExxonMobil Corp., Macy’s Inc., Nationwide Mutual Insurance …
Read More »The clearXcxhange P2P Payment Service Adds U.S. Bank As An Owner And User
Person-to-person payment company clearXchange has a fifth owner. U.S. Bank, a unit of U.S. Bancorp, said on Tuesday it had invested in the network and plans to offer clearXchange services. Terms were not disclosed. ClearXchange was founded by Wells Fargo & Co., Bank of America Corp., and JPMorgan Chase & …
Read More »With Small Merchants Lagging, Visa Embarks on EMV Education Tour to Hit Basics
As the U.S. payment card industry migrates to EMV chip cards, there’s one group to which the payments industry needs to pay special attention. Smaller merchants have little awareness of what EMV is and how their businesses will be affected by it. That’s why Visa Inc. set out Friday on …
Read More »75% of Apple Pay Users Make Repeat Apple Pay Purchases At Same Locations
Retailers like nothing more than for a new customer to become a familiar customer, and that seems to be happening with a portion of Apple Pay users, finds a report from Auriemma Consulting Group. New York-based Auriemma says data from its Apple Pay tracker survey, which canvasses Apple Pay use …
Read More »Nearly Two-Thirds of Organizations Fall Out of PCI Compliance a Year Later: Report
It’s a sobering statistic. Only 28.6% of the companies surveyed in the Verizon 2015 PCI Compliance Report were still in compliance with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard a year after a successful validation. Released Thursday, the annual report catalogs the state of PCI compliance gleaned from more than …
Read More »Old-Line Risk Modeling Crimps Money, Time, Expertise for Effective Data Security
With the pressure on to secure the digital fortifications of payment data, security professionals say they need more money, more time, and more knowledgeable staff to defend their companies, according to a survey from data-security company Trustwave. In its 2015 Security Pressures Report, of the more than 1,000 security professionals …
Read More »Anywhere Commerce’s Gateway Course Includes Adding NFC-Payment Capabilities
Mobile point-of-sale company AnywhereCommerce will add near-field communications (NFC) payment capability to its mobile hardware in coming weeks, signaling a further shift along its path to becoming a cloud-based payments gateway. That’s the word from William Nichols, Anywhere Commerce’s chief executive. That strategy, implemented about six months ago when Nichols …
Read More »Shopify Makes App Free and Expands POS Service to iPhones
Online-commerce company Shopify Inc. has made its Shopify POS app free for its merchants and introduced an iPhone version of the payments service, the company recently announced. The app, which launched in 2013, includes a card reader. The new app replaces the Accept Payment option in Shopify Mobile, the Ottawa, Ontario-based company’s …
Read More »With Fraud Hitting Apple Pay in Its ‘Soft Underbelly,’ Experts Work on a Fix
Ever since its launch, proponents of Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay mobile-payments service have touted the wallet’s high-tech security features, including tokenization of card credentials, a secure element in the phone locking down those credentials, and fingerprint authentication. But now, only four months after that much-heralded launch, banks that support Apple …
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