Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
In the wake of Bitcoin’s continuing problems with price volatility and unstable processors, the future of virtual currencies got even cloudier over the past week on news that the Royal Canadian Mint plans to sell its MintChip digital-currency system. Rumors that MintChip was on the block had been circulating …
April, 2014
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8 April
NACHA’s New Same-Day Settlement Plan Draws Plenty of Questions From a Curious Crowd
You might call it the first stop on a long road show looming for automated clearing house network oversight body NACHA’s new proposal for same-day settlement of ACH transactions. The particular stop was a packed session at NACHA’s annual payments conference on Tuesday, where executives from financial institutions and payments …
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7 April
In the Wake of Its Effort to Tokenize Card Numbers, The Clearing House Turns to the ACH
The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC, which last summer announced its effort to tokenize payment card numbers, is now mulling a related system that would similarly mask sensitive consumer information related to automated clearing house transactions, and may have a proposal ready by year’s end. “It’s something we’ve spent a …
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7 April
Leaf Adds a Merchant Services Provider Referral Marketplace
Tablet-based point-of-sale provider Leaf Holdings Inc. is providing a marketplace to help merchant service providers find merchants. Dubbed Payments Apps, the service provides a free listing with the payment company’s contact information and a description of up to 2,000 characters. Payment companies pay $10 per month per merchant if the …
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7 April
NACHA Unveils Opt-In Program To Reduce Exceptions in ACH Bill Payments
In a further escalation of its war on costly bill-payment exceptions, automated clearing house governing body NACHA on Monday announced a new program that will convert erroneous electronic bill payments that otherwise would go through as paper checks into ACH transactions with a new field where the biller can enter …
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4 April
With Abandonment Soaring, Equifax And Jumio Aim To Ease Mobile Commerce Pain
Consumer affinity for shopping on smart phones and tablets is unlikely to abate any time soon. And that poses a problem for retailers as they try to make the payment experience easier on mobile commerce sites and apps. It’s a problem that credit-reporting agency Equifax Inc. and payments-and-authentication-services provider …
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3 April
Exposure to Card Fraud Spikes in 2013 As Shift to EMV Looms, AFP Survey Reports
Some 43% of businesses report they were exposed to card fraud in 2013, a whopping rise of 14 percentage points from 2012, according to the latest annual fraud survey from the Association of Financial Professionals. Nonetheless, survey respondents are remarkably optimistic about the Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip card standard, with 92% …
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3 April
Star Strikes Deal with MasterCard in the Latest Common AID Pairing
After a string of news from Visa Inc. about partnerships with electronic funds transfer networks to facilitate debit transactions with chip cards, MasterCard Inc. got back in the game Thursday with the announcement that First Data Corp.’s Star network will use MasterCard’s so-called common application identifier (AID). n Visa has …
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3 April
ETA Seeks A More Visible Presence at Regional Acquirer Conferences
Payments industry professionals attending one of the four regional acquiring conferences can expect to see more from the Electronic Transactions Association at the events. n “This is a conscious effort on the part of the ETA to participate, support them, and engage in mutually beneficial activities,” Oxman tells Digital Transactions …
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2 April
Startup PayStand Targets Online Sellers with Bitcoin Option, Fixed Monthly Fees
Merchants that think payment services should leverage software, be simple to integrate, carry low or no fees, and include digital-currency choices have a champion in PayStand, a startup that emerged Tuesday from private beta with $1 million in funding and a promise of no transaction fees for online sellers. The …