News

October, 2018

• 25 October

  New CEO Says Payments Are a ‘Big Part’ of Discover’s Growth Strategy

  

  Discover Financial Services’s lending operations dwarf its payments business, but payments nonetheless are an important component of the company’s growth strategy, new chief executive Roger C. Hochschild said Thursday. Hochschild, who joined Discover in 1998 and served as its president and chief operating officer for 14 years, this month succeeded …
• 25 October

  Shopify Posts Higher Volume and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 10/25/18

  

  In an online question-and-answer session with sellers, eBay Inc. said its new Managed Payments platform will add PayPal as a payment option by next summer. The new platform relies on payments provider Adyen as a gateway to a variety of payments options. E-commerce processor Shopify Inc. reported an operating loss …
• 24 October

  Visa CEO Predicts 100 Million Contactless Cards in a Year

  

  Visa Inc. has been talking up contactless payments lately, though its executives and spokespersons usually dole out percentages rather than hard numbers to describe what is still a minuscule market in terms of card numbers and transaction volume. But chief executive Alfred F. Kelly gave an eyebrow-raising statistic Wednesday regarding …
• 24 October

  As The 2018 Holiday Shopping Season Approaches, So Too Do Criminals, Especially for Online Merchants

  

  Merchants should expect even more consumers to shop online this holiday shopping season. They also should expect even more fraud attempts. New research from Riskified, an Israel-based data-security provider, and cybersecurity firm IntSights finds that the number of false retailer Web sites meant to get consumers to give up their …
• 24 October

  As the Fed Mulls an Entry Into Real-Time Payments, a TCH Executive Flashes a Caution Flag

  

  If the Federal Reserve decides to compete in the developing market for real-time payments, it will face considerable obstacles, one of which has to do with whether such competition is really needed, according to an official with The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC. The Clearing House, which is recruiting financial …
• 24 October

  WEX To Acquire Bill-Pay and Virtual Card Specialist Noventis

  

  Fleet-fueling and corporate-payments provider WEX Inc. reported this week that it has a deal to acquire Noventis Inc., a bill-payment network and virtual card specialist. South Portland, Maine-based WEX said in a news release that it already has a “longstanding relationship” with Noventis as a supplier of virtual cards for …
• 24 October

  AmEx Acknowledges Investigation and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 10/24/18

  

  Processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) said its Merchant Solutions unit processed 1.53 billion point-of-sale transactions in the third quarter, a 22% increase from 1.26 billion a year earlier. Sales volume rose 30% to $40.9 billion. The Consumer Solutions segment, which includes the Netspend prepaid card operation, posted gross dollar …
• 23 October

  The Zelle P2P Payment Service Posts 83% Transaction Growth in the Third Quarter

  

  The Zelle person-to-person payment service continued to gain traction in the third quarter. Zelle Network reported Tuesday that it processed $32 billion in the three months ended Sept. 30 on 116 million transactions. The latest figures represent a year-over-year growth rate of 67% in payment value and 83% in transactions. …
• 23 October

  As an E-Commerce Payment Spec Goes out for Comment, ‘Commercial Applications’ Could Emerge by Early Spring

  

  With a major new—and somewhat controversial—e-commerce standard now entering a 45-day comment phase, the payments industry is likely to have at least some “commercial applications” ready by early spring, the top executive in charge of Visa Inc.’s implementation tells Digital Transactions News. The specification, known as Secure Remote Commerce, has …
• 23 October

  EMS Buys POS System Developer and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 10/23/18

  

  Electronic Merchant Systems announced the acquisition of Total Touch POS, a POS system developer for the hospitality industry. Terms were not disclosed. Bank of America Merchant Services, along with First Data Corp., announced it integrated BlueSnap Inc.’s All-in-one Payment Platform into its system. BAMS is the first integration since First …