Bitcoin has taken a beating in recent days, but investors who bought earlier this year are still enjoying handsome returns. Now, some merchants of high-end goods are signing up to accept the virtual currency, hoping to cash in on that wealth effect. Bitcoin was trading at $3,498 early Thursday morning, …
September, 2017
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14 September
Vantiv Debuts a Debit Card-Based Settlement Service
Merchants that process with Vantiv Inc. will have a new option to receive their settlements within minutes in the FastAccess Funding program the processor and program partner Visa Inc. announced Thursday. Merchants typically receive their settlement funds via the automated clearing house, which may take one to three days. Instead …
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14 September
First Data Notes Hurricane Impact and other Digital Transactions News briefs
Citing the recent huge data breach at credit-reporting agency Equifax Inc., the National Retail Federation and other trade groups in a letter to Congressional leaders said any new federal law governing data-breach notifications should apply to all industries that handle consumer data. The groups want a uniform federal standard to replace the …
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13 September
With its New iPhone X, Apple Brings Facial Biometric Authentication to Apple Pay
The Apple Pay mobile-payments service got only a few brief mentions in a nearly two-hour presentation Tuesday afternoon in which Apple Inc. executives introduced the latest versions of their 10-year-old iPhone and other new products. But what they did say could change payment security because the new iPhone X will …
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13 September
LevelUp Reaches Open Dining Agreement and other Digital Transactions News
ICBA Bancard, the card-processing unit of the Independent Community Bankers of America trade group, said it will offer member banks a card-not-present authentication service through Visa Inc.’s CardinalCommerce subsidiary. Mobile-payment provider LevelUp has reached an agreement with Open Dining, a vendor of mobile order-ahead technology, to list restaurants using Open Dining’s platform …
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12 September
MagicCube Prepares for a PIN-on-Glass PCI Specification Due Later This Year
In anticipation of an upcoming PCI Security Standards Council specification for enabling PIN-on-glass transactions with consumer mobile devices, MagicCube released MC-Screen Shield, a back-end technology to help secure the PIN. PIN-on-glass technology—in which the PIN is entered via a display instead of using a dedicated PIN pad—has been available for …
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12 September
Americans More Willing Than Brits and Aussies To Pay ATM Fees, Survey Finds
Americans and Australians are using ATMs less than they did two years ago, while British adults are the biggest and most frequent users of the machines that debuted 50 years ago in their country. But Americans are more willing than their English-speaking compatriots to pay ATM fees. Those are some …
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12 September
Can Venmo Start Earning Revenue for PayPal With a Plastic Visa Debit Card?
PayPal Holdings Inc.’s Venmo peer-to-peer payment service has been a fabulously popular product among users, but from PayPal’s point of view it has one big problem: It’s free. Since users don’t pay for the service, PayPal has to seek Venmo revenue elsewhere. Now, with a test about to start for …
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11 September
How Online Payments Will Change, or Won’t Change, Upon Amazon’s Patent Expiration
Patents usually get the most attention when a person or company files for one, but the one held by Amazon.com Inc. for single-click buying that is set to expire Tuesday is generating plenty of buzz about how much, if at all, e-commerce will change when it’s gone. Granted by the …
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11 September
Equifax Breach Comes As Merchants And Banks Struggle With Outsized Fraud
Last week’s disclosure that hackers had accessed up to 143 million credit records at Equifax Inc. has stirred fears of a tsunami of fraud in coming months. But physical and online merchants are already struggling not only with a huge threat of fraud, but with a stunning fraud cost that …