Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Flint Mobile Inc., a startup whose app allowed merchants to process transactions by using their smart-phone camera to scan customers’ card numbers, abruptly ceased operations earlier this month and has arranged for merchants to switch over to Stripe for processing. That’s according to MerchantMaverick.com, a merchant-processing review site Flint, which …
Read More »Eye on EMV: Merchant Adoption Shortfall; Visa Chip Card Tally Tops 212 Million
Patience, it seems, will be the watchword when it comes to merchant adoption of EMV chip card technology, while the number of cards issued bearing a chip continues to grow. A new report from The Strawhecker Group, a payments consultancy, finds that 37% of U.S. merchant locations are EMV-ready, falling …
Read More »Visa’s Real Square Stake
Editor’s note: Read the latest by clicking here. A spate of media reports that Visa Inc. owns nearly 10% of Square Inc. are wrong and are based on a misreading of a filing Visa made Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to a person familiar with the matter …
Read More »Visa’s Stake in Square Is a Whole Lot Lower Than a Widely-Reported 10%
It was all over the financial press Friday morning that Visa Inc. owned nearly 10% of merchant processor Square Inc. But it turns out that Visa’s real stake is a tad lower—try less than 2%. The news stories, which started with a Reuters report out of India, were based on …
Read More »ETA Releases Updated Underwriting Guidelines for Acquirers and ISOs
As promised, the Electronic Transactions Association has updated its 2014 guidelines for merchant acquirers and independent sales organizations on merchant underwriting and monitoring. And more updates are likely as technology and regulators keep the pressure on merchant processors to stay ahead of risks to the payment system. “We really want …
Read More »Despite Some Fourth-Quarter Improvements, Wall Street Punishes First Data
Leading payment processor First Data Corp. late Tuesday reported modest revenue and transaction growth in 2015’s fourth quarter, as well as better pre-tax profitability and an improved balance sheet in the wake of its October initial public offering, but investors still didn’t like what they saw. The Atlanta-based company’s stock …
Read More »The PCI Council Sets Security Rules for Token Service Providers as their Role Grows
With the coming of mobile payments and their attendant security issues expanding demand for so-called token service providers, the PCI Security Standards Council has issued rules intended to keep the tokenization environment safe. The Wakefield, Mass.-based PCI Council in December quietly released a 92-page document titled, “Additional Security Requirements and …
Read More »A Tipping Point May Be Nearing for NFC Terminals, But Some Big Retailers Aren’t Sold
How many point-of-sale terminals have to be enabled for near-field communication (NFC) before the technology becomes a must-have experience for consumers in stores? In the U.S., at least, the answer is 35% of the installed base, according to Osama Bedier, president of Poynt Co., a Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup that …
Read More »Visa Opens Scores of Its APIs to Developers in a Bid To Speed Payments Innovation
In a move that recognizes the powerful role application developers play in the global payments arena, Visa Inc. on Thursday opened scores of its application programming interfaces to thousands of outsiders worldwide, including merchants, banks, and technology companies. The new program, called Visa Developer, embraces some 155 APIs and includes …
Read More »Eye on Acquirers: Charge Volumes and Processing Revenues Grow for Vantiv and Heartland
Two leading merchant acquirers, Vantiv Inc. and Heartland Payment Systems Inc., are reporting strong transaction growth in their most recent financials. Boosted in part by its first full year of owning Mercury Payment Systems, Symmes Township, Ohio-based Vantiv on Wednesday said its Merchant Services segment processed 19 billion transactions in 2015, …
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