With momentum building to ban cashless stores, a rough consensus seems to be emerging that the United States will never have the cashless society futurists have predicted for decades as first cards, then e-commerce, and now mobile payments took root. To be sure, research released Tuesday by Square Inc. shows …
Read More »As U.S. Contactless Card Payments Ramp up, Canada and the U.K. Point the Way to Mass Adoption
Contactless payments account for only an estimated low-single-digit share of U.S. general-purchase credit and debit card transactions, but contactless has a much greater share of payments in Canada and the United Kingdom, recently released data show. Canada’s largest merchant acquirer, Toronto-based Moneris Solutions Corp., says that in the first quarter …
Read More »Nxgen Makes Another Acquisition and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 5/21/19
Nxgen International Inc. acquired payments provider Payment Plus Inc. for an undisclosed amount. PPI will continue to grow its business in Kentucky and the Midwest, Nxgen said. Card-issuing platform Marqeta said it raised $260 million in Series E funding, placing the company’s value at almost $2 billion. Marqeta said the …
Read More »First Data’s Volume Growth Slowed in the First Quarter, but Brick-and-Mortar Topped E-Commerce
First-quarter growth in leading merchant processor First Data Corp.’s portfolios lagged growth posted in the preceding two quarters, but in a rare event physical merchants posted higher sales increases than their online counterparts. In its latest SpendTrend report, First Data says total payment card spending at U.S. merchants on its …
Read More »BAMS Lands Sezzle and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 5/20/19
Sezzle, an online provider of installment loans to consumers, will use the Bank of America Merchant Services platform for digital card processing. Lavu, provider of mobile point-of-sale systems for restaurants and bars, certified three receipt printers from Epson America Inc. Lavu previously certified Epson’s Mobilink line of mobile receipt printers. …
Read More »Chase To Buy InstaMed and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 5/17/19
JPMorgan Chase & Co. said it will buy InstaMed, a specialist in health-care payments. Terms were not disclosed. In April, InstaMed released an app with a blockchain prototype that it said will demonstrate how the technology can support adjudication and payment for insurance claims, patient billing, and patient payment. NLS …
Read More »Among Businesses, A Wider Array of Payouts to Consumers Is Gaining Attention
Consumer-payments services are starting to garner attention among businesses, with 76% of banks having corporate customers asking for automated business-to-consumer payment services. That’s the word from Bottomline Technologies Inc. in its 2019 B2B Payments and Working Capital Management Strategies Survey, released this week. The survey of more than 300 financial …
Read More »A New Survey Casts Doubt on the Idea That Contactless Cards Will Trigger More Mobile Payments
Conventional wisdom in the payments business has been that the advent and spread of contactless cards would pave the way for wider use of mobile payments. But research released this week indicates that may not be the case. Indeed, far from serving as the training wheels for mobile payments, new …
Read More »Boomtown Raises $12 Million and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 5/16/19
Boomtown Inc., which provides merchant-support services, raised $12 million in funding led by Telstra Ventures with others participating. The Series B funding will go toward building its Relay Software-as-a-Service platform and additional growth. Boomtown also announced that Robert H.B. Baldwin Jr., a member of the Global Payments Inc. board of …
Read More »Eye on Ride Share: Uber Picks Adyen’s 3-D Secure; Lyft Debuts Mastercard Card for Drivers
Processor Adyen N.V. said ride-share service Uber will use Adyen’s 3-D Secure service online and in-app. 3-D Secure is an online authentication standard that, now in its second iteration, uses multiple bits of data to verify elements of a transaction. Unlike the first version, 3-D Secure 2 aims to be …
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