News

July, 2018

• 31 July

  Fintech Firms Can Now Apply for National Bank Charters As the OCC Opens the Door

  

  Financial technology firms, many of which command significant positions in the payments business, can now apply to become national banks. Moving on a proposal it’s had under consideration for months, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced on Tuesday it will begin accepting bank-charter applications from fintech firms. …
• 31 July

  Retailers’ Cost of Fraud Keeps on Rising. Now, It’s $2.94 for Every Fraud Dollar, LexisNexis Says

  

  It’s a fact of doing business that retailers have to contend with fraud. Now, the cost of managing fraud has increased, says LexisNexis Risk Solutions in its 2018 True Cost of Fraud report for retailers. For every dollar of fraud, merchants pay $2.94, a figure that is 6% more than …
• 31 July

  Aliant Payment Systems’s In-House Crypto Service and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 7/31/18

  

  E-commerce marketplace and payments-technology provider Shopify Inc. reported revenue for the quarter ended June 30 of $245 million, up 62% year-over-year. Gross payments volume totaled $3.6 billion, up 64% from $2.2 billion in the same quarter last year. Shopify posted a $30.8 million operating loss, nearly double the $15.9 million …
• 30 July

  Kroger’s Foods Co Lobs a Grenade at Visa in the Ongoing Guerrilla War Over Card-Acceptance Costs

  

  Citing acceptance costs, Foods Co, a California unit of leading supermarket chain The Kroger Co., says it will stop accepting Visa credit cards Aug. 14 at 26 stores. “Foods Co is discontinuing the acceptance of Visa credit cards to save on the high costs associated with the credit card company’s …
• 30 July

  Buoyed by Its ISV Strategy, First Data Eyes a Joint-Venture Resurgence

  Processor First Data Corp.’s strategy of providing payments integration to independent software vendors appears to be yielding results. The Atlanta-based company said it signed 94 ISVs in the second quarter. That, along with good growth in its direct-sales channel, contributed to the 17.1% growth in second-quarter revenue in First Data’s …
• 30 July

  Contactless Payments Forecast and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 7/30/18

  

  Joe Kaplan, the chief executive of merchant processor Paya and former president of the Electronic Transactions Association’s board of directors, died unexpectedly last week, the ETA announced. Kaplan was the former CEO of Total Merchant Services and founded Innovative Merchant Solutions, which he sold to Intuit Inc. in 2003 and …
• 27 July

  ISOs Urged To Begin Thinking Beyond Pure Profit

  

  The independent sales organization business is one that has spawned multimillion-dollar fortunes for numerous entrepreneurs. But perhaps it’s time for the industry to begin thinking beyond pure profit, merchant-acquiring executives suggested Thursday. The executives participated in a panel dubbed “Payments Doing Good” at the MidWest Acquirers Association annual conference in …
• 27 July

  Reports Show How Fast P2P Payments Are Growing for Bank And Nonbank Providers

  

  Long an afterthought in payments, peer-to-peer transfers are top-of-mind in the industry just now, and this week three reports emerged to show just how fast the payment type is growing for bank and nonbank networks alike. The bank-owned Zelle network processed 100 million transactions totaling $28 billion in the three …
• 27 July

  Volume Jumps 14% for Discover’s Payment Services Unit

  

  The Pulse debit network, Diners Club International, and the network partners of Discover Financial Services collectively generated $57.3 billion in second-quarter volume, a 14% increase from a year earlier, Discover reported Thursday. Pulse, the biggest of the three units in Discover’s Payment Services segment, posted $44.3 billion in volume, up …
• 27 July

  Stripe Enters Issuing and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 7/27/18

  

  Processor Stripe launched Stripe Issuing, a platform to aid merchants creating their own credit and debit cards. The service enables developers and businesses to create physical or virtual cards with a single application programming interface call to the platform. Stripe said it is not issuing cards directly to consumers. Physical cards …