Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
News of impending interchange-rate revisions from Visa Inc. may have roiled the payments industry, but for processing giants like Global Payments Inc., the impact will simply be business as usual. Top Global executives made that point crystal clear Wednesday. “We see these [rate changes] all the time. We have to accommodate …
February, 2020
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12 February
PayPal Funds Firearms Payments Research and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 2/12/20
PayPal Holdings Inc. said it and the Center on Crime and Community Resilience at Northeastern University, along with the University of Chicago Crime Lab, formed a research project to examine payment methods used to finance illegally-sourced firearms with the goal of combatting the illegal sale of guns.Processor Fiserv Inc. announced its “Scan to …
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11 February
RILA Calls for Action on the Fed’s Debit Cap As Powell Testifies Before Congress
Federal Reserve Board chairman Jerome Powell is testifying before Congress this week, and mixed in with questions and answers about interest rates, economic growth, and employment could be queries about when the Fed is going to update its cap on the fees issuers can charge for debit card transactions. At …
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11 February
Repay Expands Its Footprint with Ventanex Acquisition
Payment-services provider Repay Holdings Corp. continued its run of acquisitions Monday when it announced it bought Ventanex for up to $50 million. Ventanex is an integrated-payments provider operating in consumer finance, especially mortgage-loan servicing, business-to-business health-care payments, and some other segments. Founded in 2012 and based in the Dallas suburb …
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11 February
Mastercard Forms a Joint Venture To Clear Domestic Chinese Card Transactions
Mastercard Inc. is the latest U.S. payments company to take initial steps to operate in China with Tuesday’s announcement it will form a joint venture with NetsUnion Clearing Corp. to establish a domestic bank card clearing entity. The entity formed from the joint venture—Mastercard NUCC Information Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd.—received …
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11 February
RILA Urges Lower Durbin Debit Cap and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 2/11/20
The Retail Industry Leaders Association issued a statement calling on Congress to press Federal Reserve Board chairman Jerome Powell to “set a true rate” for debit card transactions that would reflect the intent of the Durbin Amendment to the Dodd-Frank Act. The amendment regulates debit card transaction pricing for large issuers. Powell is scheduled …
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10 February
Eye on Fintechs: Sezzle Sizzles With 1 Million Users and Curve Opens a U.S. Office
Buy-now-pay-later specialist Sezzle Inc. said it surpassed 1 million consumers using its online payment service. Launched in 2016, Sezzle said it had reached 500,000 customers only in August 2019. At the end of the fourth quarter, the company, with corporate headquarters in Australia, said more than 10,000 merchants offer its …
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10 February
Four Indicted in Equifax Breach and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 2/10/20
The U.S. Department of Justice announced indictments against four members of a unit of China’s People’s Liberation Army with computer fraud, economic espionage, and wire fraud in connection with the 2017 data breach at credit-reporting agency Equifax Inc. that compromised personal data on approximately 145 million Americans. According to the indictment, the defendants exploited …
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7 February
Washington’s ‘Vitriolic’ Mood Isn’t Slowing the March of Major Regulation Affecting Payments
There’s plenty of proposed legislation affecting the payments business just now, and casting a long shadow over all of it is the present atmosphere of partisanship. “The mood in Washington is vitriolic, childish. It’s all-out war,” said Scott Talbott, senior vice president of government relations for the Electronic Transactions Association, …
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7 February
Nacha Is Building Phixius, a Trusted Conduit for Payment-Related Information
A platform to help ensure payments are made to the proper entity is preparing for a May debut. Dubbed Phixius, the Nacha-developed platform will provide a way to enable the secure sharing of payment-related information. That’s important because the platform, announced this week, could save businesses time in vetting new …
