News

October, 2021

• 15 October

  MagicCube Pockets a $15-Million Round As Device Shortages Spark Interest in Its Technology

  

  The global shortage of semiconductor chips that’s plaguing the makers of point-of-sale terminals and other payment devices has left at least one technology firm sitting pretty, its founder and chief executive says. “It’s wind in our sails,” says Sam Shawki, chief executive of MagicCube Inc. That’s because MagicCube’s technology enables …
• 15 October

  Bakkt Acquisition a Step Closer and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 10/15/21

  

  VPC Impact Acquisition Holdings, a special-purpose acquisition company, announced its shareholders approved VPC’s acquisition of Bakkt, thus taking the digital-asset marketplace public.Payments-technology provider Worldnet Payments said it is the first integrated payments platform to complete a Level III EMV and contactless certification of Ingenico’s Self Series of devices. Ingenico is a unit of Worldline S.A.Payments …
• 15 October

  Plaid Announces New Tools to Make It Easier for Developers to Scale Faster

  

  As part of its strategy to support application developers, open-banking platform provider Plaid Inc. this week introduced at its developer conference several tools to help developers create a broader range of financial technology applications regardless of the programming language developers use. The new suite of tools include Plaid Pattern apps, which …
• 14 October

  The U.K.’s SumUp Busts Into the U.S. Acquiring Market With Its Deal for Fivestars

  

  In a deal that could have important implications for payments providers like Square Inc. and Stripe Inc., the United Kingdom’s SumUp Inc. early Thursday announced it has acquired Fivestars Loyalty Inc., a San Francisco-based payment facilitator for some 12,000 small businesses. The acquisition, SumUp’s first in the U.S. market, calls …
• 14 October

  ZmBIZI’s Tap-to-Pay Smart Phone Released and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 10/14/21

  

  ZmBIZI LLC released its Z2 smart phone that accepts tap-and-pay transactions without requiring an external POS terminal. The $550 smart phone was part of a Visa Tap to Phone test earlier this year and is expected to have full commercial availability in early 2022.Visa Inc.’s U.S. Spending Momentum Index fell for the second consecutive month, …
• 14 October

  KyckGlobal Enables Echo Health To Digitize Claims Payments

  

  As part of its strategy to automate payouts for health-care and property-and-casualty carriers, Echo Health Inc., a provider of payment technology to insurance carriers, is partnering with KyckGlobal Inc. to enable claimants to receive payments digitally through PayPal, Venmo, push to card through Visa Direct, and the automated clearing house. …
• 13 October

  Eye on BNPL: Bonsai, Afterpay Ease Shopping on Publisher Sites; Opy USA’s Pay by Text Service

  

  Shop Bonsai Inc., which provides in-app checkout technology under the Bonsai moniker, said it and buy now, pay later specialist Afterpay are making it easier for consumers to shop on an online publisher’s site without leaving the site. Announced Wednesday, the arrangement enables Bonsai shoppers to potentially reduce the checkout …
• 13 October

  Ransomware Attacks up 62% and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 10/13/21

  

  Insurer Alliance Global Corporate & Specialty issued a report detailing how companies can protect their systems from an epidemic of ransomware attacks. Such attacks increased 62% in the first half 2021, year-over-year, following a 20% rise for all of 2020, according to FBI statistics cited by Alliance.Online gifting platform SmartGift said it is …
• 13 October

  Consumers Are Flocking to E-Commerce, But They’re Hitting Too Many Brick Walls, Stripe Says

  

  Despite consumers’ expectation that checkout during an e-commerce purchase should be fast and instinctive, most online merchants still have checkout procedures that add unnecessary friction, says a survey from online-payments powerhouse Stripe Inc. The report, released Tuesday, reveals that 96% of 200 North American e-commerce merchants surveyed had committed at …
• 12 October

  Computop Leverages NFC Tags to Enable Mobile Contactless Payment Without An App

  

  NFC tags, a technology commonly used to enable contactless payments through a mobile device at the pump and at vending machines, are making their way to the physical point-of-sale. Computop, a Bamberg, Germany-based provider of omnichannel and fraud-prevention solutions, announced on Tuesday Computop Close-by, a payment solution that uses NFC …