The Aldi Inc. supermarket chain, which only last year began accepting credit cards, said in a press release on Thursday it now “accepts all forms of contactless payment,” including Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay and Alphabet Inc.’s Android Pay mobile wallets. The Batavia, Ill.-based company has already activated contactless payments chainwide, …
Read More »Apple’s Big Job: Getting iPhone Users Comfortable With Facial Biometrics
A large portion of Apple Inc.’s customers spurn facial biometrics, a key security element in Apple’s new iPhone X, according to new research. Survey results from United Kingdom-based Juniper Research say that more than 40% of users of Apple’s mobile devices in the U.S. consider themselves unlikely to use facial …
Read More »With its New iPhone X, Apple Brings Facial Biometric Authentication to Apple Pay
The Apple Pay mobile-payments service got only a few brief mentions in a nearly two-hour presentation Tuesday afternoon in which Apple Inc. executives introduced the latest versions of their 10-year-old iPhone and other new products. But what they did say could change payment security because the new iPhone X will …
Read More »What Growing Pains? In-Store Mobile-Payment Volume Is Rising Fast, Researcher Says
Enthusiasts may lament the slow rate of adoption for mobile payments generally in the United States, but some researchers are forecasting robust growth for contactless payments via mobile wallets at the point of sale. In a recent report, New York City-based research firm eMarketer said so-called proximity mobile payments will exceed $1,000 …
Read More »Payments Professionals Diagnose What Ails Mobile Wallets
There wasn’t a Regular Joe in the room, but that didn’t stop a panel of payments professionals Tuesday from probing the consumer psyche to discern why mobile wallets aren’t more popular. As a percentage of point-of-sale transactions, most experts agree that the major general-purpose mobile wallets—Apple Pay, Android Pay, and …
Read More »Fitbit’s Newest Fitness Tracker Shows How the Card Brands Are Pushing Contactless
Consumers have a new option when choosing a fitness device that’s capable of making a contactless payment. Fitbit Inc., a San Francisco-based maker of fitness trackers, announced its Ionic smart watch Monday that includes Fitbit Pay, the company’s first foray into contactless payments. Fitbit Pay, which will be available when …
Read More »USA Technologies Swings to Profit as Network Continues Growing
USA Technologies Inc., a provider of payment services for vending machines and other unattended merchant locations, said Tuesday the number of connections in its ePort network grew 32% year-over-year to 568,000 as of June 30, and transaction volume nearly as much. The Malvern, Pa.-based firm also reported net income of …
Read More »Despite Obstacles, U.S. Contactless Payments Will Reach 34% in Five Years, Forecaster Says
It’s what some may consider a bold forecast for contactless payments in the United States, but Juniper Research is predicting that, by 2022, 34% of electronic payments will be contactless, up from less than 2% in 2017. United Kingdom-based Juniper released its forecast Monday in a report called “POS and …
Read More »Last Year Saw Double-Digit Drops in Fraud Rates for Debit Issuers, Pulse Study Says
There’s some good news for U.S. debit card issuers in the form of reduced fraud rates, according to the 2017 Debit Issuer Study released Monday by Pulse, the electronic funds transfer network owned by Discover Financial Services. The fraud-loss rate for signature-debit transactions fell 30% from 2015’s 2.6 cents per …
Read More »There Are As Many as 500,000 U.S. ATMs Now, Says ATMIA
The estimated number of U.S. ATMs—including those deployed by financial institutions and independent operators, and branded machines—increased 10.5% to at least 475,000 and as many as 500,000, the ATM Industry Association said this week. The previous estimate, released in 2015, was 430,000, says David Tente, ATMIA’s executive director for the …
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