- Point-of-sale equipment maker Scansource Inc. announced it will divest distribution businesses in Europe, the United Kingdom, Colombia, Chile, and Peru, as well as its Miami-based export operation, as part of a strategic repositioning. The businesses totaled $623 million in net sales in fiscal 2019.
- Apple Inc. said its Apple Card is now open to all U.S. consumers to apply for, having been in limited release for a few weeks.
- EVO Payments Inc. said it will offer Ingenico Group’s Tetra point-of-sale devices to merchants.
- E-commerce platform BigCommerce said merchants can now sell hemp and hemp-derived cannabidiol products online. The platform includes access to multiple hemp-friendly merchant-services providers.
- Data breaches have affected more than one-third of Canadian consumers, according to research from PCI Pal, a provider of payments services to contact centers.
- ZipLine, a payments provider that specializes in private-label debit, launched an e-book to the general public with information for businesses on how to attract Millennial customers and for Millennials on how private-label debit works.
- Spain’s Santander Bank plans to expand remittance technology from blockchain provider Ripple Labs to allow persons in Latin America to send money to the United States. Santander first launched the Ripple technology last year in Spain, Brazil, Poland, and the United Kingdom.
Category: Fraud & Security
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Scansource To Divest Global Units and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 8/20/19
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Cash Still Popular for Low-Value Transactions and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 8/16/19
- A CreditCards.com poll found that 49% of U.S. adults usually pay with cash for transactions of less than $10. Thirty-five percent use debit cards and 16% use credit cards. The survey canvassed more than 2,500 adults in July.
- Eighty-two percent each of Generation X consumers and Baby Boomers buy in-store at least monthly, Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. said, citing a February survey it commissioned of more than 10,000 U.S. adults.
- The U.S. Department of Defense paid almost $1 billion in incorrect travel reimbursements to service members from 2016 to 2018, according to the Government Accountability Office.
- The Chamber of Digital Commerce blockchain trade group published the second edition of its “Understanding Digital Tokens” series of reports.
- Mercator Advisory Group released its “Payments, ATMs, and Prepaid: Cash Still Has Its Place” report on consumer shopping experiences.
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Repay Acquires TriSource Solutions and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 8/15/19
- Repay Holdings Inc. announced the acquisition of TriSource Solutions for up to $65 million. TriSource, founded in 2007, provides back-end transaction-processing services to independent sales organizations. TriSource has been Repay’s primary third-party processor for back-end settlement since 2012.
- The U.S. District Court in Cleveland approved a $4.3 million settlement of a class action filed on behalf of credit and debit card holders whose card information was compromised in a 2017 data breach at 325 Sonic Corp. fast-food restaurants. Sonic estimated the class has about 1.5 million members, according to a press report.
- The U.S. Payments Forum released its latest Market Snapshot that says 64% of in-store payment terminals are chip enabled and 68% of total transactions are chip-on-chip, meaning a chip card was used at a chip-enabled terminal.
- Net Element Inc. said it had $950 million in transaction-processing volume in the second quarter, up 8.5% from a year ago.
- Credit card balances totaled $868 billion in the second quarter, a shade below the record high of $870 billion set in 2018’s fourth quarter, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s latest household debt and credit report. Before 2018, credit card debt hit a high of $866 billion in 2008’s fourth quarter and bottomed out after the Great Recession at $659 billion in 2014’s first quarter.
- Southern California’s OneWest Bank said the Zelle person-to-person payments service is now available in its mobile app.
- Bluefin Payment Systems LLC received from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office a patent for managing payload decryption via fingerprints.
- Point-of-sale equipment maker Star Micronics said Cova Software, developer of cannabis retail software, supports its mC-Print3 printers.
- Coil, a service to enable payments to online content creators, said it received 1 billion in XRP, the Ripple-backed cryptocurrency, from Xpring, Ripple’s investment unit. Coil will use the funds to drive adoption of XRP.
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Accenture Releases Cybercrime Report and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 8/14/19
- Accenture released its 2019 Cyber Threatscape Report that examines cybercrime operating models and the effects of ransomware.
- Point-of-sale equipment maker Star Micronics said Square Inc. now supports its mG-Scale products.
- In a survey of 100 small businesses, installment-payments provider Klarna found that 40% of online retailers said operational size was the biggest barrier to adopting new payment options.
- Agreement Express Inc., a client-onboarding software platform for financial services, signed F1 Payments as a client.
- Payments advisory firm Aite Group LLC released a report on cross-border remittances.
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A Rising Tide of Digital Payments Will Bring New Fraud Threats, Says Forrester
As payment companies expand ways for consumers to make digital payments, 62% of North American merchants, bankers, and fintech providers expect more such payments within the next two years, says Forrester Research Inc. in its “Understanding the Evolving Payments Landscape” report released Monday.
Commissioned by Visa Inc., the report also found that 46% expect ways to make payments via the Web or on a mobile device will increase. This won’t be just for large merchants either. Forty-seven percent say more small businesses will rely on a mix of credit and debit cards and digital payments.
Yet, with additional merchants accepting digital payments, acquirers and banks will face new fraud threats, the report suggests. Sixty-one percent said that new payment technology make them more susceptible to fraud. “One downside of this advancement in payment technologies is that as payments get more innovative, so do fraudsters,” the report said. “Businesses are acutely aware of the new fraud risks that come with the adoption of new payment technologies”
When asked about the level of fraud concern for mobile banking bill-payments, 68% said they were concerned or very concerned. Similarly, 60% held that attitude about mobile wallets and digital wallets, and 58% did for peer-to-peer payments.
Forrester’s recommendation to contend with fraud associated digital payments is to use to a combination of tools and strategies. Among them is adopting artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze payment data and fraud, using tokenization, and integrating fraud-management systems and research interface to make it easier to track potential fraud. Its other recommendations are to use advanced authentication techniques and to treat fraud management as a process and not as a single project.
The study, completed in March, surveyed 566 professionals internationally, encompassing one-third each from fintech providers, retail banking—including acquirers—and merchants.
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Wells Names New Wells Fargo Merchant Services Boss and other Digital Transactions New briefs from 8/12/19
- Wells Fargo & Co. said former Mastercard Inc. executive Colleen Taylor is joining the bank as head of Wells Fargo Merchant Services, the bank’s merchant-acquiring joint venture with Fiserv Inc. Fiserv took over the operation as part of its acquisition of First Data Corp., which last year reached an agreement with Wells to extend the deal until 2024. A similar joint venture, with Bank of America Corp., will not renew upon its expiration next year.
- Payments provider BlueSnap said it will offer its users dispute-management services from ChargeBacks911.
- Research commissioned by Amadeus Payments indicates credit cards directly paid for 57% of Americans’ travel expenditures in 2018, down from 61% in 2017. E-wallets were used to pay for 23%, up from 20%. The research doesn’t indicate in how many cases credit cards rather than account transfers were the underlying funding mechanism for the e-wallet payments.
- Merchant processor Square Inc. is rolling out its Square Terminal in Canada.
- CPACharge, a specialist in payment processing for accountants, said it has integrated its service with the ZipBooks accounting software, allowing professionals to create and send invoices and receive payments via cards and electronic checks.
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Low Forecast for Contactless Mobile Payments Volume in 2019 and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 8/9/19
- 451 Research projects that contactless mobile payments will control less than 2% of U.S. retail sales in 2019, owing to lack of a “measurably better value proposition” for mobile payments vs. cards, as well as other factors.
- Chase Bank, a unit of JPMorgan Chase & Co., has canceled all credit card debt for cardholders in Canada, according to reports. The move follows the bank’s decision in March 2018 to close all credit card accounts in the country.
- Omnico Group, a point-of-sale services provider, said 52% of U.S. shoppers become angry waiting to pay in a store, according to its “Omnico US Retail Research” report that canvassed more than 2,000 consumers. Seventy-four percent said technology will make shopping easier and 86% want to use scan-and-pay cell phone or tablet apps to skip lines.
- The National ATM Council trade group said its third annual “fly-in” to Washington D.C., a two-day lobbying effort in late July in which ATM executives and suppliers met mostly with members of the Senate Banking Committee and House Financial Services Committee, resulted in 60 meetings with lawmakers and their staff members. Regarding the controversial issue of whether government should require stores to accept cash, NACS said it wants a cash option and would support bipartisan legislation “to establish clear and cohesive national policy on the issue.”
- Wirecard AG launched a new mobile app for North American consumers who use the company to receive payouts.
- Transport for London, operator of the city’s vast subway and bus system, on Thursday took the Web site of its Oyster fare card offline for a second day because of a credential-stuffing attack in which fraudsters using stolen account credentials from other sites attempted to use them on the Oyster site, according to press reports. A TfL spokesperson said no customer payment data has been accessed.
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3dcart Adds ClearSale Option and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 8/8/19
- ClearSale, an online fraud-prevention provider, said online shopping cart 3dcart will offer ClearSale services to its merchants.
- Payrailz, a payments provider to banks and credit unions, announced it has launched a credit-union service organization (CUSO) called CU Payz.
- Payments-technology firm Verrency said it has collaborated with Coinify, a digital-currency payments provider, to allow banks to offer customers the ability to spend digital currency via their existing cards or digital wallets.
- Mobile point-of-sale provider Lavu acquired Sourcery, an automated accounts-payable service for the restaurant industry. Terms were not disclosed.
- Net Element Inc. launched its Netevia Mastercard for businesses. Merchants can choose a percentage of card sales to be credited to the card instead of their bank account, and use the funds for card purchases.
- Payment-technology provider ACI Worldwide Inc., which in May acquired the Speedpay bill-payment service from The Western Union Co., reported second-quarter revenues of $297.6 million, up 27% from $235 million a year earlier. Net quarterly income swung to $5.73 million from a loss of $14.6 million last year.
- The Western Union Co. said its Business Solutions unit will advise the more than 12,000 members of The Association of Canadian Travel Agencies on cross-border payments and foreign-currency transactions under a new agreement.
- Mobile-payments provider Glance Technologies Inc. said EasyPark, a British Columbia-based parking company with 135 facilities, will accept Glance Pay for parking violation ticket payments.
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Consumers Are Receptive to the Unconventional Apple Card, Separate Studies Show
Apple Inc.’s new Apple Card is an unconventional animal with what some observers call ho-hum rewards, but separate studies released Wednesday show the card nonetheless could make a big splash.
Research firm J.D. Power said its late June survey found “awareness is already remarkably high” for a product that offers “middle-of-the-road” rewards compared with other cards.
“The Apple Card has not even launched yet, and 38% of U.S. adults are already aware of it,” Costa Mesa-based J.D. Power said in a news release. “Among those who are aware of the card, 35% say that they are somewhat or very likely to apply for the card. Those numbers are even higher among younger credit card customers. Among 18-29 year-olds, over half (52%) are aware of the Apple Card.”
The results are based on an ad-hoc survey of 1,354 consumers in late June.
Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple announced the card in March followed by a limited release this week, with full rollout expected later this month. The numberless titanium Mastercard, issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, is closely integrated with the Apple Pay mobile-payment service. Apple, in fact, strongly encourages use of its iPhone and Watch for in-store purchases charged to the card.
J.D. Power says its studies show about 11% of adults report using Apple Pay in stores. “Perhaps not surprisingly, 52% of Apple Pay users say they are likely to apply for the Apple Card in the next 12 months,” the release says.
Apple Card doesn’t have fees and offers 3% cash back on Apple purchases, 2% for Apple Pay purchases, and 1% on other purchases. J.D. Power says the card has “a competitive package of rewards and benefits, but not the best in the industry by any means … the challenge for Apple will be to change the credit card purchase habits of consumers to use Apple Pay rather than a physical card.”
Separately, New York City-based consulting and research firm Auriemma Group said its May-June survey of 2,029 adults with smart phones or wearable devices that support mobile payments found that about half of Apple Pay users were aware of the card. In a news release, Auriemma called that finding “an extremely high proportion considering the card has not yet launched.” Awareness also was high, at 27%, among all respondents eligible for mobile payments, Auriemma said.
Apple on Tuesday posted several videos on how to apply for and use the Apple Card.
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InComm in L.A. Transit Retail Expansion and other Digital Transactions New briefs from 8/7/19
- Prepaid card program manager InComm said it is working with the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority to expand from 450 to 2,000 the number of retail locations where riders can buy and reload the transit system’s TAP cards. The expansion is expected to be complete next year.
- Associated Bank launched a digital checking account that can be opened and managed entirely from a mobile device. The product includes Zelle peer-to-peer payments, facial and fingerprint authentication, bill pay, and remote deposit capture.
- Lavu, a provider of mobile point-of-sale gear for restaurants and bars, will integrate receipt printers from Epson America Inc. for its Lavu 4.0 system, Epson said.
- On Track Innovations Inc., a supplier of contactless card readers for vending and other markets, reported second-quarter revenue of $4.1 million, down 29% year-over-year. It said that in the quarter it delivered 19,000 readers to various markets, including 10,000 to the ATM market.
- E-commerce platform Verishop Inc. agreed to offer installment-payment options from Affirm Inc.
- Signifyd, a provider of machine-learning technology, launched Signifyd Seamless SCA, a set of services aimed at helping merchants meet the requirements of the European Payment Services Directive 2.
- The Western Union Co. said customers in the United Kingdom can send money transfers to more than 200 countries and territories from more than 90 Robert Dyas homeware and garden stores. Last week, Western Union announced it would lay off 10% of its employees to save money.
- Cardtronics plc said Investor Cash Management Holdings Inc. joined its surcharge-free Allpoint Network that has 55,000 ATMs.
- The Electronic Transactions Association and The Strawhecker Group released their U.S. Spending Snapshot that found year-over-year consumer spending growth was 5.5% in the first quarter.