Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Facebook Inc. has just done the equivalent of dumping the euro in favor of national currencies with its new policy that will phase out the Facebook Credits virtual currency. The huge social network, which also is introducing a way to pay for subscriptions, says the changes will simplify the user …
June, 2012
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19 June
Discover’s Chief Hits Visa’s Strategy To Defend Its Debit Market Share
The chief executive officer of Discover Financial Services isn’t too pleased with what Visa Inc. is doing to retain its lead in the debit marketplace now that the Durbin Amendment’s transaction-routing provisions are in place. Discover owns the Houston-based Pulse network, which like other electronic funds transfer networks stands to …
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19 June
Eyeing Larger Merchants, Square Enhances Apps with Loyalty Functions
Hard on the heels of its announcement last week that it is now processing for some 2 million merchants and individuals, mobile-acceptance startup Square Inc. on Tuesday said it has added customer-loyalty functions to its Pay with Square and Square Register applications. The new functions will allow both merchants and …
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18 June
Dynamics Gets Set to Push its ePlate Loyalty Platform into Entertainment, Retailing
The music and movie industries as well as retailers are next on startup Dynamics Inc.’s list of targeted industries for its ePlate loyalty application. Launched in April, ePlate embeds computer architecture into a credit card, enabling consumers to rewrite information from a choice of loyalty programs to the card’s magnetic …
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14 June
Check 21 Saved U.S. Payments System $3 Billion-Plus in 2010, Fed Paper Estimates
Check 21 saved the U.S. payments system more than $3 billion in 2010 as paper check clearing gave way almost entirely to image clearing, according to a paper released recently by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. The paper sets out what is believed to be the first effort at …
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14 June
PayPal’s Foray into TV Commerce Could Help Recruit Merchants for POS Processing
PayPal Inc.’s latest effort to enter the nascent business of processing transactions for merchandise shown on television—so-called T-commerce—could also help recruit more merchants for the San Jose, Calif.-based company’s point-of-sale payment service, a PayPal executive tells Digital Transactions News. As it turns out, merchants that agree to accept PayPal at …
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12 June
Speculation Ends As Apple Unveils a Digital Wallet That Works with QR Codes
Ending months of speculation about is intentions in mobile payments and promotions, computer icon Apple Inc. on Monday entered the increasingly crowded market for digital wallets with an application it calls Passbook. At the same time, the company announced it now has card credentials for some 400 million users on …
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12 June
Jury Nails VeriFone in Software Patent Case But Clears Rival Ingenico
A little software company gone bust won big against leading point-of-sale terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc. in a patent-infringement verdict June 8. A federal jury in Texas found after a five-day trial that VeriFone infringed on two patents held by CardSoft Inc. and awarded damages and royalties of $15.4 million. …
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12 June
Global Payments Breach Exposes Data From Applicants for Merchant Accounts
The hackers who broke into merchant processor Global Payments Inc.’s computer systems added a new chapter to the disreputable history of data breaches by gaining access to information from applicants for merchant accounts, the company disclosed late Tuesday. Global’s revelation apparently is the first publicly known incidence of merchant-applicant information …
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11 June
Mobile-Payments Startup LevelUp Blazes a New Trail in Merchant Pricing
In what may be a harbinger of things to come in mobile-payments pricing models, Boston-based LevelUp has dropped its merchant-acceptance fee from 2% of the transaction to zero. Instead, the company will earn merchant fees of 35 cents per dollar of incremental sales generated by the redemption of rewards earned …