Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
With financial institutions lending less to small businesses, new, technology-based companies are moving into merchant lending to fill the void. This is a market typically served by so-called merchant cash-advance firms, companies that lend money in the form of advances against a merchant’s expected credit card volume. In many cases, …
Read More »Eye on Earnings: MasterCard’s Volumes Grow; Mercury Boosts Vantiv’s Merchant Segment
Financial analysts gave MasterCard Inc. and Visa Inc. credit for leading a New York Stock Exchange rally Thursday as higher consumer spending on payment cards boosted the networks’ revenues. And processor Vantiv Inc. reported a 42% increase in merchant-processing revenues in the wake of its June acquisition of Mercury Payment …
Read More »Visa’s Scharf Stresses the Network’s Digital Future, Promises ‘We Will Win’
Stressing new services such as tokenization, online checkout, and mobile payments, Visa Inc. chief executive Charles W. Scharf on Wednesday left no doubt where the sprawling card network’s future lies. “The things we are doing are all about having the best products in the market to capture where the growth …
Read More »AmEx Program Aims To Kick-Start EMV Card Acceptance Among Small Businesses
By Jim Daly Among the many companies President Obama mentioned Friday as he announced that the federal government would be supporting Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip-and-PIN card payments in a big way beginning next year was American Express Co. The president disclosed that AmEx was about to launch a $10 million program …
Read More »AmEx Converts Rewards Points Into Cash for Transactions at McDonald’s
American Express Co. is making it easier for its cardholders to use their points to buy a Big Mac sandwich at McDonald’s restaurants in the United States. The card issuer announced Tuesday that AmEx rewards points now can be used to pay for purchases at select McDonald’s locations with national …
Read More »The Payments Industry Needs To Find Common Ground on Tokenization, Group Says
Tokens, that is, tokens for securing electronic payments, almost became a household word two weeks ago when Apple Inc. introduced Apple Pay, a mobile-payments service that will rely heavily on tokens when it launches next month. The concept of tokenization, however, has been around for quite some time in the …
Read More »With 56 Million Cards Compromised, Home Depot’s Data Breach Surpasses Target’s
Just when you thought retailer data breaches wouldn’t get much bigger, they did. Home-improvement retailer The Home Depot Inc. disclosed Thursday that the breach it confirmed Sept. 8 compromised 56 million payment cards between April and this month. That means Home Depot’s breach affected 40% more cards than the 40 …
Read More »Apple Pay: No Charge for Merchants, But Transaction-Security Fees for Issuers
Apple Inc.’s introduction of its new Apple Pay service for its soon-to-be released iPhone 6 and the Apple Watch raised a huge number of questions in the payments industry. One of the biggest topics of speculation is just how is Apple going to make money from the service, with combines …
Read More »The U.S. EMV Migration Produces a Windfall for POS Terminal Producer VeriFone
It’s a good time to be a point-of-sale terminal maker when all of your customers have to go through the payments equivalent of abandoning the horse and buggy and jumping into an automobile. With a major U.S. deadline for converting from magnetic-stripe payment cards to the Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip card …
Read More »Home Depot Hires Data-Security Firms As Other Merchants Contend With Breaches
Big box hardware retailer The Home Depot Inc. has hired two data-security firms to delve into its point-of-sale systems to determine the extent of a possible breach first reported on Tuesday. Security site KrebsOnSecurity.com said then that several banks it contacted said they saw evidence that Home Depot stores …
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