Customer demand has prompted CheapAir.com to accept three more cryptocurrencies in addition to Bitcoin, which the travel-booking site began accepting in 2013. The new ones are Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Dash. These three currencies promise faster transaction times and lower fees than Bitcoin and are the most-requested cryptocurrencies among those customers …
Read More »Chase Sues Restaurant Operator Landry’s To Recover $20 Million in Data-Breach Network Fines
JPMorgan Chase Bank and its merchant-acquiring affiliate Paymentech have filed a breach-of-contract suit against restaurant operator and Paymentech merchant Landry’s Inc. seeking to recover $20 million in fines from Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. stemming from a 2014-15 data breach at dozens of Landry’s properties. The bank and processor, collectively called …
Read More »Time’s Up: What Will Be the Impact of Europe’s GDPR on U.S. Payments Companies?
Procrastination is no longer an option. Time to comply with the massive General Data Protection Regulation for businesses that collect data about European Union consumers has run out. And with the regulation going into effect Friday, many U.S. payments companies have found they, too, have had to change their data-collection …
Read More »The Four Big ‘Pays’ Dominate Mobile Payments, But for How Long?
In four years, the Starbucks mobile-payment service, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay, will continue to garner large shares of users, but not as much as they do today. That’s the forecast from research firm eMarketer Inc., released Tuesday. Of the four major mobile-payments services, Starbucks Corp.’s app will …
Read More »Nearly All of Visa’s Payment Volume Now Comes From Chip Cards, the Network Reports
Some 97% of Visa Inc.’s total U.S. payment volume stemmed from EMV chip cards in March, according to the card network’s latest periodic report on EMV’s progress in the United States. EMV volume totaled $70.7 billion, up from $4.8 billion in September 2015, the last full month before the country …
Read More »COMMENTARY: Here’s How the Big Card Networks Can Make Their Common Buy Button a Winner
The digital payments innovators used to be Mastercard and Visa, but with the rise of PayPal, it’s been a new game. Then along came Alipay and Apple Pay and many other local or specialized payment methods, making the playing field even more competitive for these card payment platforms. Visa Checkout …
Read More »Plastic Preferred for Vacations and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 5/21/18
Payments industry veteran Dan Henry has been named chairman of 3PEA International Inc., a prepaid card program manager. President and chief executive Mark Newcomer, who co-founded the company and has served as chairman since 2006, will become vice chairman. Henry was until recently chief executive of prepaid card specialist NetSpend, …
Read More »Retailers Amp Up Fraud Prevention for Their Online Gift Card Sales
Selling gift cards online makes a lot of sense for many merchants, but criminals know that, too, and have quickly figured out ways to steal the cards. Now, as merchants have increased their sophistication in countering these thefts, so too have criminals figured ways to foil the merchants. “Gift cards …
Read More »However It Will Work, the Common Buy Button Isn’t Going to Appear Any Time Soon
With each week that passes, the so-called unified buy button concept introduced by the major card networks last month takes on more definition, but despite all the discussion, the idea of an online checkout shared by multiple payment networks remains too vague—and too futuristic—to suit some expert observers. “I keep …
Read More »Payment Processor Spindle Cancels an Acquisition, But Rents the Target Company’s CEO
The struggling merchant processor Spindle Inc. canceled its planned acquisition of independent sales organization and gateway provider VyaPay, but reported Wednesday that it plans to form a so-called strategic alliance with VyaPay, and VyaPay’s chief executive will provide day-to-day management of Spindle. Mesa, Ariz.-based Spindle, whose shares trade over the …
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