Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
In its latest move toward becoming a force in electronic payments, social network Twitter Inc. reported Monday that it is starting a test allowing members to make purchases via tweets from 28 partners that include merchants, rock bands and non-profits. “For a small percentage of U.S. users (that will grow …
Read More »Often Linked to Mobile Payments, Location-Based Rewards Aren’t Rewarding for Everyone
Mobile-payments providers have looked to offers and rewards as a means of engaging with consumers and merchants and boosting payments activity. Indeed, most mobile strategists value the technology’s ability to deliver rewards at the moment consumers are in the store, if not necessarily in front of the relevant merchandise. But …
Read More »Rumors Cast Apple’s Prospective Role as a Payments Provider as a Done Deal
In case you spent the entire Labor Day long weekend in a fishing boat on a remote lake, you could barely miss the stories moving over the business wires in recent days about Apple Inc. and electronic payments. In sum, the iconic computer maker and iTunes and App Store provider …
Read More »Looking To Expand Beyond Digital Markets, Boku Gets a Read on Magazine Subscriptions
Ever since the carrier-billing model for mobile payments found a foothold in the digital-goods market several years ago, processors have tested various tactics to broaden the range of goods the model could be applied to. The latest example is San Francisco-based Boku Inc. and its announcement Thursday that it will …
Read More »Visa Brings Big Acquirers on Board To Build Momentum for Its New Visa Checkout Service
Visa Inc. on Wednesday said eight merchant acquirers and e-commerce platform providers will be rolling out the 1-month-old Visa Checkout online and mobile payment service. With three platform providers already offering the service, up to 4 million U.S. online merchants will be able use Visa Checkout, Visa claims. The acquirers …
Read More »Don’t Expect Apple To Radically Remake Electronic Payments, Researcher Says
Apple Inc. is expected to release its iPhone 6 next month and, not surprisingly, speculation about the coming smart phone’s features is intense. But a new report from IDC Financial Insights cautions that Apple is not out to reshape the mobile-payments industry. Many of the rumors in payments circles center …
Read More »Eyeing Transaction Dropouts, PayPal Unveils One Touch for Single-Click Mobile Payments
In a move that could significantly boost mobile-payments activity, PayPal Inc. on Tuesday unveiled a single-click payment method for merchant apps. Dubbed One Touch, the method allows mobile users to log in once with their user names and passwords, then simply touch or click on a “buy” button for all …
Read More »COMMENTARY: Amazon, Square, Groupon, and the Death of mPOS
This week, Amazon launched Amazon Local Register, the mobile POS (mPOS) solution that may well kill mPOS solutions. That’s not to say that they won’t exist anymore, but it is to say that mPOS as a value proposition in and of itself is really going to struggle moving forward. Square, …
Read More »Dubbed Local Register, Amazon’s Mobile POS Service Arrives
Online retail giant Amazon.com Inc. is moving into brick-and-mortar stores with the debut Wednesday of its Local Register mobile point-of-sale service. Similar to other mobile POS services, such as Square Inc.’s, Local Register requires merchants to create an account, purchase a card reader and download an app to a …
Read More »COMMENTARY: Chip, Signature, And Square—Perfect Together
Rather than jumping to conclusions about the implications of Square Inc.’s decision last week to implement a Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip card solution that forgoes PINs and instead relies on a signature at the point of sale, it’s important to first ask the question: Why would a payments disruptor and tech …
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