The word “regulation” generates little enthusiasm in the merchant-acquiring industry, but it’s more palatable when “self” is the operative adjective rather than “government.” Thus, the Electronic Transactions Association is pushing its new Self-Regulation Program for acquirers, independent sales organizations, and payment facilitators. Launched early this month, the voluntary program requires …
Read More »Qoins Debuts As Debt-Payoff Service and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 9/28/18
A new micropayment platform called Qoins has just closed a first round of funding for $1 million. The app allows users to pay off debt by rounding up purchases to the nearest dollar and sending the excess to the creditor, with a focus on credit card and student debt. Qoins …
Read More »Cash-Based Online Payment Service PayNearMe Adds Card And ACH Options
For nine years, PayNearMe has focused on enabling consumers without access to payment cards to make cash payments for online goods at point-of-sale terminals in what has grown to a network of some 27,000 merchant locations. On Thursday, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company said it now can process credit, debit, and …
Read More »Chase Adds Card Lock Feature and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 9/27/18
BNY Mellon has become the first bank client to sign a reseller agreement with Early Warning Services’ Zelle person-to-person payment network for tokenized disbursements to consumers. Zelle indicated earlier this year it would expand into disbursements as a potential field for fee-based payment services. Zelle also announced Dollar Bank now offers Zelle …
Read More »EBay Starts Managing Payments And Looks to Add a ‘Majority’ of Sellers by 2021
EBay Inc. on Tuesday announced it has “begun managing payments” on its massive marketplace and said it expects to have a “majority” of sellers converted to the new program by 2021. Under the new payments regime, sellers will encounter lower transaction costs, eBay’s announcement said, though it did not offer …
Read More »Square Adds Payroll Services and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 9/26/18
Payment gateway USAePay completed EMV certification for First Data Corp.’s Rapid Connect platform. USAePay said the certification enables merchants to accept EMV payments, particularly EMV PIN-debit transactions, via its mobile application. First Data Corp. launched a service for card issuers called FirstSense that combines threat intelligence with the company’s fraud-detection …
Read More »Visa Begins a U.S. Contactless Payments Push Again. This Time the POS Hardware Is in Place
It’s another go-around for contactless payments as Visa Inc. prepares an extensive campaign involving issuers, merchants, and consumers to push use of the payment method. The card brand on Tuesday debuted an infographic on contactless payments from across the globe, and touted the preparedness of the U.S. market for the …
Read More »Paycosmos’ ‘ISO in a Box’ Launches and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 9/25/18
Paycosmos, a provider of virtual and point-of-sale terminals, has teamed with payments provider linked2pay to launch “ISO in a Box,” a platform that offers sales agents support with acquiring and underwriting merchants and help with payments technology. Cashierless technology like that of Amazon Go will account for $45 billion in …
Read More »Full PCI Compliance Drops for the First Time in Six Years, Verizon Reports
Full compliance with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard dropped in 2017 for the first time in six years, according to a report released Tuesday by Verizon Communications Inc. New York City-based Verizon’s PCI-qualified security-assessment service, one of the largest in card-related security industry, says 52.5% of the organizations it …
Read More »PayPal Says It Is Shutting Down Payments for the Controversial Infowars Properties
The payments business has become even more complicated than usual in recent years by politics, a point driven home on Friday when PayPal Holdings Inc. announced it will stop processing payments for the controversial Infowars Web site and related properties. “We do not take these actions lightly and we work …
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