While the two global payments networks have been embroiled in a controversy over merchant debit card fees in the U.S. market, they also face trouble in the United Kingdom over an even bigger issue: credit card interchange fees. That fact was thrown into relief early Thursday when Reuters reported the …
Read More »Boku M-Payments Network Spans 90 Countries and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 8/19/21
Boku Inc. launched what it says is the world’s largest mobile-payments network. The M1ST Payments Network reaches 5.7 billion mobile-payment accounts in 90 countries and offers more than 330 payment methods, the company says.Global payments provider Adyen NV said Just Eat Takeaway.com, an online food-delivery marketplace, will issue its prefunded Takeaway Pay Card …
Read More »Fiserv’s Carat Adds PayPal And Venmo As Payout Options
Carat, Fiserv Inc.’s digital payout service, has broadened the number of accounts payments can be sent to with the addition of PayPal Holdings Inc. and Venmo. Carat payouts already can be sent to a credit or debit card, via automated clearing house to a bank account, to a prepaid card, …
Read More »Pulse Debit Study: Online And Contactless Usage Surges While Wallets Assert Themselves
The story of debit cards in the pandemic year of 2020 turns out to have several chapters—including higher average tickets, a sharp swing to card-not-present usage, a dramatic surge in contactless adoption, and higher mobile-wallet usage. Meanwhile, account-to-account transfers turned out to be the fastest-growing form of debit, though usage …
Read More »How Paysafe Sees Its SafetyPay Deal As a Major Move Into Open Banking
Open banking has been a big trend in payments for some time, and now traditional payment processors are getting in on the action. Paysafe Group Holdings Ltd. early on Monday announced it has agreed to pay $441 million to acquire Miami-based SafetyPay, a 15-year-old provider of digital payments for cash-paying …
Read More »Mastercard’s Magstripe Farewell and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 8/16/21
Mastercard Inc. said it will slowly phase out the requirement that its branded cards have a magnetic stripe in favor of the EMV chip. Beginning in 2024, in most markets, newly issued Mastercard credit and debit cards will not be required to bear the magstripe. By 2033, Mastercard said none of …
Read More »WUBS Renames as Convera and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 8/13/21
Western Union Business Solutions (WUBS), formerly a unit of the Western Union group of companies, will rename itself Convera upon its recently announced $910-million acquisition by Goldfinch Partners LLC and The Baupost Group LLC. Patrick Gauthier, most recently head of Amazon Pay, has been announced as chief executive of Convera, which …
Read More »Veem Introduces Two Short-Term Loan Options To Boost Cash Flow for Small Businesses
In response to small and mid-size businesses’ need for capital as the economy re-opens in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, payment-technology provider Veem Inc. on Thursday introduced two new short-term lending options as part of its Veem Capital offering. The first option, Pay Later, allows small and mid-size businesses …
Read More »eBay’s Payments Payoff and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 8/12/21
EBay Inc. reported some 80% of its on-platform payments volume was processed through its managed-payments service by the end of the second quarter. More than 13 million sellers globally were using the platform.Payment card manufacturer CPI Card Group Inc. said consumers’ shift to contactless cards, which command a higher price than ordinary plastic, helped drive …
Read More »BlackBerry Revs Up the Engine for Connected Car Payments
Vehicle-based payments got a boost Wednesday with BlackBerry Ltd.’s introduction of a new app to enable secure payments from a car’s dashboard. The app, which leverages the concept of the connected car, acts like a mobile wallet that connects to a payment network to enable a variety of transactions, including …
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