• Mobile-payments provider LevelUp said it has closed a $50 million funding round with participation by existing investor JPMorgan Chase & Co. as well as US Boston and CentroCredit Bank. LevelUp, which says its user count is nearly 1 million, is the subject of a lawsuit by competitor CardFree Inc. alleging LevelUp fraudulently …
May, 2017
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16 May
MoneyGram Shareholders Give a Thumbs-Up to Ant Financial’s Buyout Offer
Shareholders of MoneyGram International Inc. voted overwhelmingly in favor of Ant Financial Services Group’s planned $1.2 billion acquisition of their company, Dallas-based MoneyGram announced Tuesday. A preliminary tally shows 97% of the shares voted were in favor of the deal and represented more than 82% of all outstanding shares, MoneyGram …
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15 May
Why Alipay Is So Intent on ‘Ubiquity’ in North American Merchant Acceptance
When it comes to establishing merchant acceptance in North America, Alipay’s ambitions go well beyond niche markets. In fact, “When we’re looking at partners, we’re looking for ubiquity,” Souheil Badran, president of Alipay North America, tells Digital Transactions News in a wide-ranging interview. Those partners so far include First Data …
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15 May
ISO Acquisition Boosts Merchant Acquirer JetPay’s Revenues
Thanks in part to its acquisition of a Florida independent sales organization nearly a year ago, merchant acquirer JetPay Corp. on Monday reported that its first-quarter revenues increased 63% to $18.9 million from $11.6 million in the year-ago period. JetPay’s Payment Services segment, its biggest unit, saw revenues jump by …
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15 May
The Pays Users To Surpass 150 Million by the End of 2017, Predicts a Juniper Report
The number of consumers using at least one of the major third-party mobile-payment services—Apple Pay, Android Pay, or Samsung Pay—will top 150 million globally by the of 2017, says Juniper Research, a U.K.-based firm, in its “Is OEM-Pay the Future of Contactless” report. Some 50 million of them will begin …
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15 May
EVO Makes Another Acquisition and other Digital Transactions News briefs
• EVO Payments International announced it purchased the remaining ownership interest in Zenith Merchant Services, a Montreal-based payments provider. Terms were not disclosed. • Payments processor Computer Services Inc. has integrated data from Dow Jones Risk & Compliance for sanctions screening to help clients control the risk of doing business with politically …
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15 May
CardFree Charges That Rival LevelUp Fraudulently Accessed Its Order-Ahead Service
It could be taken as a sign of how competitive the order-ahead-and-pay feature has become in the rapidly developing market for mobile payments. In a lawsuit filed in federal court on May 2, CardFree Inc. has accused rival mobile-payments developer Scvngr Inc. of fraudulently accessing CardFree’s technology to process orders …
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12 May
For Payments Players, Not Much Cause for Optimism in the Age of Trump, Analysts Warn
While much of the corporate world has high hopes for a business-friendly bent from the Trump Administration, two policy analysts on Wednesday poured cold water on some of the payments industry’s fondest hopes for regulatory relief. One such hope, to scrap a 1,689-page rule regulating prepaid cards, was sinking fast …
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12 May
VeriFone And Global Payments Sign up for Mastercard’s Speedy EMV Protocol
Efforts to make the EMV payment process more appealing to consumers and merchants got another boost with Mastercard Inc.’s announcement Thursday that point-of-sale equipment maker VeriFone Systems Inc. and payment processor Global Payments Inc. now support the card brand’s M/Chip Fast protocol. The protocol, announced a year ago, enables developers …
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12 May
NRF Launches Durbin Amendment Campaign and other Digital Transactions News briefs
• The National Retail Federation on Friday launched a multimedia advertising campaign urging the House of Representatives to protect the Durbin Amendment. The campaign, which includes radio commercials targeting the districts of key Congressmen who have expressed support for repealing Durbin, comes as the House prepares to take up the Financial …