Transaction Processing

As Covid-19 cases spike around the country, grocers and technology companies alike are scrambling to blunt the pandemic’s financial impact. On Thursday, the online delivery service Instacart announced it is starting a program with the grocery chain Aldi to allow recipients of federal SNAP benefits to use their electronic benefit …

Discover Financial Services reported its payment-services volume totaled $69.7 billion in the third quarter, up 11% year-over-year. Volume on the Pulse debit network increased 16% to $55 billion owing to larger average spending due to the pandemic and to the lift from stimulus funds.Payments provider PaymentCloud Inc. said it acquired contactless technology startup …

Visa Inc. on Wednesday announced the rollout in 15 geographic markets of Visa Tap to Phone, which allows consumers to initiate a transaction simply by tapping a contactless card to a merchant’s NFC-enabled mobile device.  Tap to Phone is now live in numerous countries throughout Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia …

PayPal Holdings Inc. announced a service that allows account holders to buy, hold, and sell cryptocurrency directly from their account. The company also said it will make cryptocurrency available as a funding source for purchases at the 26 million merchants worldwide that accept PayPal.Payments provider FIS Inc. said it added pharmacy chain Walgreens …

With merchant adoption of contactless payment solutions accelerating due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Incognia, a provider of fraud-detection applications, announced an app Tuesday to detect Quick Response code fraud.  The application uses location behavioral biometrics to create a digital fingerprint for the consumer’s identity. It uses the buyer’s real-time and …

The nation’s automated clearing house network surged again in the September quarter, even with a waning of federal-assistance payments. Volume grew by double-digit percentage increases in most major categories as the network handled 6.8 billion transactions overall, up 9%, Nacha reported Tuesday. Nacha is the governing body for the network, …

Last conducted in 2016, the latest Third-Party Processing Pricing Benchmark Study from The Strawhecker Group indicates that debit and credit card transaction pricing appears to have leveled off.  The average value of an IP-connected front-end authorization and capture action in 2020 is $0.016 for jumbo wholesale acquirers, or those with …

Payments industry veterans Will Graylin and George Wallner launched a fundraising campaign on Indiegogo for OV Valet, their new company that wants to offer Superkey, a fob that uses near-field communication and magnetic secure transmission technology, to enable tap-and-pay payments.Payments-technology provider VoPay International Inc. said it is working with Visa Inc. to integrate the …

Though the restaurant industry has taken a hit during most of 2020 because of Covid-19 countermeasures, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need new technology and services. That’s why Ziosk Inc., a Dallas-based point-of-sale technology provider, accelerated its development schedule this year and released a suite of new products. Now, in …

Billtrust, a provider of accounts-receivable software for businesses, said it will go public at a valuation of $1.3 billion through a merger with South Mountain Merger Corp., a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. Going public via a SPAC has become an increasingly popular option in recent months.In …