Facebook Inc. chief executive Mark Zuckerberg says his massive social-networking company is using an open process to get its proposed Libra cryptocurrency into the market and won’t roll it out until all concerns are addressed. Zuckerberg fielded questions about the controversial Libra project at the company’s second-quarter earnings conference call …
Read More »Discover Payment Volume up 8% and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 7/24/19
Discover Financial Services’ Payment Services unit reported its transaction volume grew 8% year-over-year to $61.8 billion, a result that included 7% growth for its Pulse electronic funds transfer network. Overall, total Discover revenue net of interest expense increased 10% to $2.85 billion, while net income jumped 13% to $753 million.In related …
Read More »UPDATED: Square Eyes Product Photos As Its Latest Service To Attract And Keep Merchants
Square Inc. is getting into the photography business as yet another way to add auxiliary services beyond payments designed to attract and retain merchants. The new service, dubbed Square Photo Studio, enables merchants, or sellers in Square’s lingo, to ship products to a Square studio in Brooklyn, N.Y., where they …
Read More »A Survey Exposes Consumers’ Ambivalence on Voice-Activated Payments
Whether most consumers will ultimately use Alexa or Siri or some other voice-activated device to make purchases may depend crucially on how much money is at risk. As it turns out, slightly more than half of U.S. consumers would be comfortable using the technology to pay for relatively small-ticket goods …
Read More »Digital Wallet Volume To Grow 40% and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 7/22/19
Juniper Research Ltd. released a report on digital wallets in North America and Europe that says purchase volume with them will increase 40% in 2019.The United States is the country from which the most people are traveling overseas, followed by Mainland China and Germany, according to Mastercard Inc.’s Global Destination Cities Index.MoneyGram International …
Read More »Allied Wallet Settles With the FTC and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 7/19/19
The Federal Trade Commission said payment processor Allied Wallet, its CEO and owner Ahmad “Andy” Khawaja, and two company officers agreed to settle FTC charges that they assisted numerous scams by knowingly processing fraudulent transactions that took more than $110 million from consumers’ account.The two-day Amazon Prime Day event this week sold more than 175 …
Read More »Volume on eBay’s New Managed-Payments Platform Grows
Online marketplace eBay Inc. saw further growth on its new, post-PayPal managed-payments platform in the second quarter despite a decline in gross merchandise volume. San Jose, Calif.-based eBay on Wednesday said the platform accounted for more than $270 million in GMV in the June-ending quarter, up 24% from the first …
Read More »Fiserv-FDC Deal Clears a Regulatory Review and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 7/18/19
Fiserv Inc.’s $22 billion acquisition of First Data Corp. cleared a U.S. Department of Justice review, the company said Thursday. In April, the Justice Department asked for more information and documents related to the deal, but, according to a Fiserv filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the DoJ attached no conditions …
Read More »Eye On the Point of Sale: Visa Agrees to Buy Payworks; ACI Signs up Worldpay
Visa Inc. said Wednesday it has acquired Payworks GmbH, a Munich-based developer of cloud-based point-of-sale payment-gateway software. Visa intends to integrate Payworks’ technology with that of another Visa property, CyberSource, and offer the combined product to merchants and acquirers. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. The combined offering will …
Read More »Zelle Blossoms for BofA and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 7/17/19
Bank of America Corp. says it has 8 million active users of the bank-backed Zelle person-to-person payment service and that it handled 69 million Zelle transactions in the second quarter, nearly double the 35.2 million transactions a year earlier. BofA had 5.4 million Zelle users in the 2019 first quarter. …
Read More »