E-Commerce

Members of Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime membership service are enthusiastic users of the e-retail giant’s payments service, which it makes available to other merchants. In fact, some 50% of Amazon Pay’s users belong to Prime, according to Amazon Pay vice president Patrick Gauthier, who spoke with Digital Transactions News Tuesday at …

• Fitness-band vendor Fitbit Inc. has acquired the wearable-payments assets of Coin in a deal that closed May 12 and includes relevant personnel and intellectual property. Terms were not disclosed. Coin, which was part of a wearable-payments initiative announced earlier this year by MasterCard Inc., is best-known for a device that …

Gift cards are the target of a crackdown in the first half of 2016. Next month, PayPal Holdings Inc. will no longer allow items equivalent to cash, including gift cards, to be covered by PayPal’s Seller Protection program for merchants. And prepaid card provider Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. recently reported …

• Groupon Inc. sold its Breadcrumb restaurant point-of-sale unit to Upserve Inc., a startup focusing on restaurant-management solutions. Terms were not disclosed, but Groupon will take an equity interest in Upserve, formerly known as Swipely Inc. Founded in 2011, Breadcrumb was acquired by Groupon in 2012. • Apple Inc.’s Apple …

• PayPal Holdings Inc. no longer will provide purchase protection for transactions made on crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter, potentially dealing a blow to the nascent crowdfunding industry, CNBC reported. • In a letter to Green Dot Corp. shareholders, Harvest Capital Strategies, which owns 9.3% of Green Dot, said it …

So far, online merchants are winning the battle against fraud, but the gains are coming at a high cost, according to the latest annual fraud study from CyberSource Corp., set for release next week with results for 2015. The progress also comes as card-not-present merchants prepare for an expected onslaught …

When it comes to mobile payments, few operators can equal PayPal Holdings Inc., a fact the company underlined on Wednesday when it reported mobile volume reached $21 billion in the first quarter, up fully 54% year-over-year. But casting a shadow over the good news was a continuing downward trend in …

First Data Corp. is taking its Clover brand, known until now as a mobile point-of-sale service, to the Web with a launch May 3 of the Clover Online Store. Announced Wednesday at Transact16, the Electronic Transactions Association’s annual conference in Las Vegas, the service enables merchants to set up an …

• Merchant processor North American Bancard Holdings introduced its Inovio Payment gateway service; NAB says Inovio’s name is taken from the word “innovation” and that the service, which includes a virtual point of sale and hosted checkout solutions, will open new markets for the company. • Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has changed …

Online retailer Amazon.com Inc. has taken another step to broadening the reach of its payments service with the debut Friday of an in-store payment service at a New York apparel retailer. This marks the first time Amazon payments has enabled in-store payments with a merchant, Amazon says. Just a couple …