News

January, 2018

• 15 January

  A Sluggish Uptake for Mobile Payments Opens a Door for Tech-Oriented Payment Cards

  

  When major technology companies started launching mobile-payments services a few years ago, many observers figured digitized and tokenized card credentials would soon replace old-fashioned plastic. But now, the chronically sluggish adoption and usage rates these mobile wallets have registered is lending new life to plastic cards. The twist is that …
• 15 January

  Lighthouse Network Buys Shift4 And Says It Will Rebrand Itself as Shift4 Payments

  

  Lighthouse Network, the company behind such acquiring and point-of-sale brands as Harbortouch and POSitouch, announced Monday it has purchased Shift4 Corp., a Las Vegas-based payment gateway, for an undisclosed amount. Allentown, Pa.-based Lighthouse also announced it would adopt the Shift4 name, rebranding itself as Shift4 Payments. It was only in …
• 15 January

  Cardlytics Files an IPO and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 1/15/18

  

  Cardlytics Inc., which provides marketers with payment card purchase information as well as ACH and bill-payment data from 2,000 partner financial institutions, filed for a $75 million initial public offering. Cardlytics says that in 2016 its platform analyzed more than 18 billion online and in-store transactions across more than 94 million accounts, …
• 13 January

  Zelle Rolls Out the First National TV Commercials for Its P2P Service

  

  Zelle on Saturday was set to run the first spots in its initial national mass-media marketing campaign, which is centered on the Tony and Grammy Award-winning actor and rapper Daveed Diggs in an effort to appeal to what the bank-controlled person-to-person payments service calls the “mobile majority” of consumers. The …
• 12 January

  Visa’s EMV-Only Signature Rule Change May Prompt More Merchant EMV Adoption

  

  Visa Inc.’s announcement Friday that it will make signature authentication optional for EMV contact and contactless transactions in North America starting in April might provide another boost for merchants who have yet to adopt chip-card acceptance, suggests an analyst. Signatures remain a requirement for Visa magnetic stripe-based transactions not subject to …
• 12 January

  Visa Says It, Too, Will Make Signatures Optional for North American EMV POS

  

  Visa Inc. is joining the other three card brands in making signatures optional for many of its transactions beginning in April. The card brand, which had credit card volume of $499 billion and debit volume of $388 billion in its fourth quarter ended Sept. 30, says in a blog post published …
• 12 January

  Same-Day ACH Debits Already Account for Almost Half of Same Day Volume, NACHA Reports

  

  Same-day processing for both credits and debits on the automated clearing house network finished its first full quarter on Dec. 31, and numbers released Thursday show a solid increase in volume and dollars. In particular, same-day debits, introduced Sept. 15 , are growing fast and finished the final quarter accounting for …
• 12 January

  Eye on Banks: Chase’s Merchant Volume Hit $1.2 Trillion in 2017; Debit Purchases Rise 6% at Wells

  

  JPMorgan Chase & Co., the largest U.S. bank by assets and the biggest bank that runs its own merchant-acquiring operation, reported Friday that it processed $1.19 trillion in payment volume from merchants last year, up 12% from $1.06 trillion in 2016. Chase’s merchant volume rose 13% in 2017’s fourth quarter …
• 12 January

  JetPay In Software Deal and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 1/12/18

  

  Processor JetPay Corp. announced its payments, payroll, and account-opening services are now available to clients of Bolts Technologies, a software provider specializing in deposit account onboarding for financial institutions. VeriFone Systems Inc. introduced its e280, a mobile point-of-sale device with a 3.5-inch color touchscreen that accepts near-field communication contactless payments, …
• 11 January

  Lowe’s, Walgreen Among Retailers With Top In-Store M-Commerce Experiences

  

  A ranking of retailers offering optimal mobile-shopping experiences in their stores places building materials retailer Lowe’s Companies Inc. atop the list, announced DMI, a mobile-retail specialist. Among the criteria Bethesda, Md.-based DMI, a unit of Digital Management LLC, evaluated in its “Mobile Maturity Model: 2018 Retail” report were pricing, inventory, …