• Prepaid card services provider Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. acquired extrameasures LLC, a promotions and incentives firm that offers Visa-branded and private-label rewards and gift cards. The deal follows Blackhawk’s acquisitions of other incentives companies, including Parago, InteliSpend, CardLab, and Incentive Solutions. • Prepaid card provider Green Dot Corp. …
Read More »As With Payments in General, Mobile Is Steadily Taking Share of Banking Transactions
There’s no turning back from the mobile phenomenon for financial transactions as a new survey finds that 41% of consumers use their smart phones to make bank transactions, such as person-to-person payments, paying bills, and making check deposits, up from 36% in 2014, says consultancy Mercator Advisory Group Inc. While …
Read More »PayPal, Card Brands Gain More Than Banks in Consumer Mobile-Wallet Preferences
If consumers wanted a mobile wallet in 2013 and 2014, they wanted it from their primary financial institution. But things changed in 2015, when PayPal and Visa surpassed banks and credit unions as preferred wallet providers. That’s the bad news for financial institutions in a new report about mobile wallets …
Read More »Aided by Mobile Tech And Social Media, Digital Payments Are Surging Globally
While the U.S. market wrestles with its nearly 6-month-long transition to EMV chip cards and contactless payments based on near-field communication (NFC) technology, the rest of the world is surging ahead with contactless, online, and mobile transactions, according to the latest report from Juniper Research. Total digital payments worldwide will …
Read More »It’ll Be 14 Years Before Mobile Payments Are Secure To Leave Cash And Cards at Home
The prospect of leaving the house with just a smart phone in lieu of a wallet full of cash and payment cards is 14 years away, according to a survey released Thursday by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a technology association based in New York City. By …
Read More »Venmo Blogs About Security Policies After Keywords Trigger Transaction Delays
PayPal Holdings Inc.’s popular Venmo person-to-person payments service posted a review of the company’s anti-money-laundering and related security policies Sunday in the wake of transaction reviews triggered by certain keywords in Venmo messages that have slowed down the payments process. “There has been recent discussion around specific keywords associated with …
Read More »ExxonMobil’s Speedpass+ App Enables Apple Pay Transactions at the Pump
Apple Pay has pulled up to the fuel pump at ExxonMobil Corp. gas stations with the release Tuesday of Speedpass+, an iOS app that enables consumers to use Apple Inc.’s mobile-payment service to pay for gas within the app. The app also is available for Android devices. It also works …
Read More »New Research Shows Low Usage Rates but High Satisfaction for Major Wallets
While the mobile wallets launched by corporate giants Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit, and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. have sparked a good deal of publicity, not much is known about actual adoption and usage so far, since the companies have been characteristically tightlipped. But that doesn’t mean researchers who …
Read More »The Brand Power of Apple and Samsung, Plus HCE, Are Lending Momentum to Contactless
The role of EMV in pushing tap-and-pay solutions is well known, but research released on Tuesday indicates the brand value of Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. can’t be underestimated. At the same time, a cloud-based technology called host card emulation is also playing a role in spreading contactless …
Read More »For the First Time, MasterCard Opens up MDES to a Third Party With G&D Deal
Ever since MasterCard Inc. introduced its tokenization platform nearly 18 months ago, no third party has been allowed to offer the product, called the MasterCard Digital Enablement Service. That changed Tuesday with the company’s announcement that Giesecke & Devrient is connecting its Convego CloudPay platform to MDES and will be …
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