Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
By John Stewart Larger screens, buy buttons, and streamlined checkouts are expected to combine to raise the profile of smart phones in e-commerce. And now there are numbers to show just how much retail sales volume the devices will generate. Smart phones will account for $27.7 billion in retail mobile …
Read More »Global Payments Will Use Apriva’s EMV mPOS Apps for Android and iOS Devices
Atlanta-based merchant processor Global Payments Inc. will use mobile point-of-sale apps from Apriva Inc. to service its merchants wanting EMV-capable mPOS, Apriva announced Tuesday. The deal sees the AprivaPay Plus app, available for iOS and Android devices, branded with the Global Payments name. Such branded, or white-labeled, agreements enable companies …
Read More »Payments Companies Gashed in Bloody Wall Street Rout
Publicly traded payments companies fared slightly worse than the major market indexes Monday in a continuation of a Wall Street selloff triggered by investor worries about China’s economic situation, overvaluation of securities, and the future of U.S. interest rates. Fifty companies tracked by Digital Transactions News fell 4.03% from Friday’s …
Read More »In This High-Stakes Poker Game, Verizon Holds More Cards Than Samsung
By John Stewart Why won’t Verizon Wireless make nice with Samsung Pay? With the U.S. debut of Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.’s mobile-payments service just a few days away—and a national launch of Samsung Pay due Sept. 28—all the major mobile network operators have signed on to support the service with …
Read More »AmEx Adds Rewards to Its Serve Prepaid Card, But Will Users Find It Worth the Price?
American Express Co. is offering new rewards and benefits for using one of its prepaid cards, but at a cost. The card brand and acquirer on Wednesday added a rewards program to its Serve card under the “Serve Cash Back” moniker. Serve Cash Back users, who pay $5.95 per month …
Read More »Samsung Pay’s Mag-Stripe Emulation Advantage Might Be Short-Lived
The debut of Samsung Pay in the United States is just a month away, but the ongoing migration of U.S. credit and debit cards to the EMV chip standard may already be eroding the nascent mobile-payment service’s unique advantage. Samsung Pay uses near-field communication (NFC) and, uniquely, a radio-frequency version …
Read More »How the Spread of Digital Payments Is Driving Online Links for Remote Devices
The increasing penetration of digital payments worldwide is helping drive conversion of point-of-sale terminals, vending machines, and parking meters from standalone devices to connected machines, according to a report released Tuesday by Berg Insight, a Gothenberg, Sweden-based research firm that follows the wireless market. Worldwide, Berg forecasts the number of …
Read More »Spinoff Ranks PayPal as a Solid No. 4 Among Payments Companies by Market Cap
Many news accounts of PayPal Holdings Inc.’s spinoff from parent company eBay Inc. noted that PayPal’s market capitalization was in the $50 billion range, but few provided context on where that placed the company among its publicly traded peers. Turns out, PayPal instantly became the fourth-largest payments player, trailing only …
Read More »Instant Deposit Could Be a Hit With Sellers, But How Long Before Copycats Arrive?
By John Stewart A new service from Square Inc. that accelerates merchants’ access to their funds in return for a 1% fee is likely to gain popularity among the small sellers that primarily use Square for transaction processing, according to some observers. That may hand Square a key advantage in …
Read More »With Certification Final, the DNA Offers Its Common AID for EMV Debit
By Kevin Woodward Financial institutions that are facing the U.S. conversion to EMV chip cards but have no global card brands on all or a portion of their debit card portfolios now have an option that helps them meet regulatory requirements. The Debit Network Alliance LLC, which is owned by …
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