As the Federal Reserve embarks upon its journey to becoming a real-time payments provider with its planned FedNow service, Mastercard Inc. on Tuesday announced the biggest acquisition in its history, one the network says will strengthen its real-time, bill-payment, and related services. Mastercard said it has a deal to buy …
Read More »Apple Card in Limited Release and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 8/6/19
Apple Inc. made its upcoming Apple Card available to the public on a limited basis. The full rollout of the card—which was unveiled in March, is issued by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and runs on the Mastercard network—is expected later in the month.Automated clearing house network administrator Nacha said it is “committed to working cooperatively …
Read More »Clark Adds ControlScan Services and other Digital Transactions New briefs from 8/5/19
ControlScan expanded its agreement with Clark Brands LLC to offer managed firewall and PCI-compliance services to the petroleum retailer.Installment-payments specialist Klarna, which has processed payments for fashion retailer ASOS in the United Kingdom, extended that relationship to the U.S. market, the companies said.In related news, installment-payment processor Splitit said a survey of more than …
Read More »Financial-Services Firms Find Favor Among Phishers
A new report about online security finds that 50% of phishing domains that researchers tracked mimicked the Web sites of financial-services companies. The findings come from the “State of the Internet/Security” report released Wednesday by Cambridge, Mass.-based Web-services provider Akamai Technologies. Forever a favorite of criminals, banks and other financial …
Read More »FIS-Worldpay Deal Closes and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 7/31/19
Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) said it has closed on its $43-billion cash-and-stock acquisition of processor Worldpay Inc. The deal was announced in March. Wednesday’s announcement follows approval of the merger by Worldpay shareholders last week and by the Federal Trade Commission in April.Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook reported the Apple Pay mobile-payments service is now completing nearly …
Read More »Visa and Kroger Settle Debit-Routing Lawsuit, but Partial Credit Card Boycott Continues
The Kroger Co. and Visa Inc. have settled a 2016 federal lawsuit in which Kroger alleged Visa interfered with its transaction-routing plans for EMV debit cards, Digital Transactions News has learned. In a separate dispute, however, the leading stand-alone supermarket chain is still boycotting Visa credit cards in some of …
Read More »It’s Hard to Beat Amazon, And That’s Putting Pressure on the Providers That Serve Small Sellers
Big merchants like Amazon.com Inc. are celebrated for virtually friction-free transaction flows, and now that’s putting pressure on the point-of-sale vendors that serve small businesses. That’s because clients want the same kind of experience for their customers, but don’t know how to go about it, a panel of experts said …
Read More »Eye on Acquiring: An End to the BAMS Joint Venture; Global Payments Updates TSYS Merger
The end of Bank of America Merchant Services, a merchant-acquiring joint venture between Bank of America Corp. and First Data Corp., is at hand. Charlotte, N.C.-based BofA said Monday it will pursue an independent merchant-acquiring strategy beginning in June 2020, though First Data, which that same day became part of …
Read More »Mastercard’s Transaction Volume Jumps 18%; Secure Remote Commerce and Contactless Payments Gain
Mastercard Inc. saw strong growth in its core business in the second quarter, a time when the network continued its push for contactless cards and development of the new Secure Remote Commerce system for online payments. Mastercard said it switched 21.4 billion transactions globally in the three months ending June …
Read More »100 Million Capital One Accounts Hacked and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 7/30/19
Major credit card issuer Capital One Financial Corp. said it detected a data breach this month in which an intruder gained access to records affecting 100 million persons in the United States and 6 million in Canada. Affected data included such information as names, addresses, Zip Codes, and dates of birth, though …
Read More »