News

March, 2021

• 2 March

  OLB Group Adds Payments Through Social Media Apps To Its Gateway

  

  Payments provider The OLB Group Inc. announced Tuesday that its SecurePay payment gateway will support payment acceptance through social-media applications without requiring consumers to leave the app. To enable payments through such apps as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, TikTok and Skype, OLB is leveraging the application-programming interfaces for social-media platforms to …
• 2 March

  Interchange Adjustments Will Add a Net $889 Million to Merchants’ Costs, an Analysis Says

  

  With the two big payment networks set to raise by hundreds of millions of dollars the cost U.S. merchants pay for card acceptance, e-commerce merchants could see fee boosts while some segments—like travel-and-entertainment and low-ticket-value, quick-service merchants—could see some reductions.  In total, rate tweaks scheduled by Visa Inc. and Mastercard …
• 2 March

  ACI’s Cash Deal with the IRS and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 3/2/21

  

  ACI Worldwide Inc. said its ACI Payments Inc. unit will support an Internal Revenue Service initiative to allow taxpayers, including those who are unbanked or underbanked, to make cash payments through a new digital barcode feature from ACI and InComm Payments’ VanillaDirect Pay unit.P97 Networks Inc., a provider of mobile payments …
• 1 March

  E-Complish Teams With Plaid to Validate Accounts And Funds for ACH Transactions

  

  In an effort to move automated clearing house transactions closer to real-time, E-Complish, a New York City-based payment processor, announced Monday it has teamed with data network Plaid Inc., to validate a bank account, and the funds in it, for ACH transactions. The service makes it possible for E-Complish customers …
• 1 March

  COMMENTARY: How Technology And Finance Are Leading a Rebound in Middle-Market Spending

  

  Among its many impacts, the coronavirus pandemic has simultaneously interrupted and accelerated a slew of business trends. To see this dynamic in action, look no further than the investment pattern of the middle market over the last two years.  When we set out to track how middle-market companies have been …
• 1 March

  Klarna Raises $1 Billion and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 3/1/21

  

  Buy now, pay later specialist Klarna AB raised $1 billion in an oversubscribed equity funding round that pegged the company’s valuation at $31 billion. Major U.S. clients include Macys, Etsy, Sephora, Ralph Lauren, and Urban Outfitters.In related news, BNPL provider Splitit Payments Ltd. announced its merchant sales volume increased almost 180% in 2020 to …

February, 2021

• 26 February

  CardX Wins Its Kansas Surcharging Suit. Surcharging Bans Remain in Only Three States

  

  CardX LLC, a surcharging-services provider, can now add another state to the list of places where it can do business. A federal judge ruled Thursday surcharging cannot be prohibited in Kansas. The decision leaves just Colorado, Massachusetts, and Connecticut with outright no-surcharge rules on the books. Filed May 29, 2020, …
• 26 February

  Mastercard Switched Transactions Volume Dips 1% and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 2/26/21

  

  Switched transactions dipped 1% for the week ended Feb. 21 for Mastercard Inc. compared to the same week last year, the card network reported. It is the first weekly year-over-year dip in switched transactions for Mastercard so far this year and reflects a swing from 4% growth in the week ended Feb. …
• 25 February

  Why PCI Is Refreshing Its Software Lifecycle Standard—And Retiring PA-DSS

  

  The growing number of attacks targeting third-party developers’ payment applications, as well as the third-party applications into which the payments capabilities are integrated, is the impetus behind the PCI Security Standards Council’s decision to update the PCI Secure Software Lifecycle standard. Introduced this month, PCI Secure SLC Standard v1.1 is …
• 25 February

  Zelle Gets Access to TCH’s Real Time Payments Network As an Integration Goes Live

  

  Peer-to-peer transactions have taken off as a way to pay digitally during the pandemic, and now the biggest bank-owned P2P network is getting a big lift through its integration with the country’s most extensive real-time payments network. Early Warning Services LLC announced early Thursday payments on its fast-growing Zelle P2P payments …