Competitive Strategies

Thirty-five merchants in the Silicon Valley area are accepting the new Yosemite Card, which caps acceptance fees at 0.3%. The private credit card can do that because it uses blockchain technology to manage transactions. Typical discount rates for network-branded credit cards range from 2% to 3% or more. Palo Alto, …

By Debra Campbell and Steve Fortson As the banking industry moves toward real-time payments, there are some practical technology considerations that are too often being overlooked, most notably, a growth of fragmented and unstructured connections between the legacy mainframe and the service-oriented architecture (SOA) platforms. Unfortunately, what we are seeing …

Apple Inc. on Monday is expected to make several major announcements, possibly including one regarding a credit card it is reportedly developing with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. that would work with the iPhone and Apple Pay, according to news services. Apple’s iOS 12.2 update will integrate a new wallet app …

Debit card issuers subject to the Durbin Amendment’s interchange price controls saw their average authorization, clearing, and settlement expense, excluding fraud, fall to 3.6 cents per transaction in 2017, down 54% since 2009, the Fed reported Thursday. The Durbin Amendment to 2010’s Dodd-Frank Act requires the Fed to issue a …

Mastercard Inc. announced contactless-payment capability will go live in 20 U.S. cities “within the next few years,” starting with subway and bus systems later this year in New York City, where the company is working with transit-technology firm Cubic Transportation Systems. Bitmo, a startup that offers mobile gift cards that …

Avnet Inc., a technology supplier for industries as diverse as automotive, communications, energy, and wearables, quickly has found that accepting Bitcoin via BitPay Inc. is a hit, especially with the Bitcoin mining industry. Atlanta-based BitPay announced this week that Phoenix-based Avnet uses it for Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash transactions. With …

Merchant processor Priority Technology Holdings Inc.’s fourth-quarter revenues fell by $19.5 million, a drop of 16.5%, in the face of a new Mastercard Inc. rule change tightening consumer notices on subscription billings. “This decline was being driven by one factor and one factor only,” Priority chairman and chief executive Thomas …

The eBay Inc. online marketplace is adding Google Pay as a payment option as it rolls out its new managed-payments platform to sellers. Google Pay will be activated in April and will be available via the app or mobile Web, and users will be able to use it on desktops …

As more and more companies adopt tokens as a proxy for the primary account number and other sensitive payment data, the day is fast approaching when the utility of the technology will move beyond the payments box. That’s the forecast from Nate Morgan, senior director for product management at CyberSource, …

Banking giant JPMorgan Chase & Co. is discontinuing its Chase Liquid general-purpose reloadable prepaid card and replacing it with a checking account called Chase Secure Banking, which has many of the same features but requires the customer to open a Chase bank account. Launched in 2012 and aimed mainly at …