Transaction Processing

The Electronic Transactions Association sent letters to Congress and the Canadian Parliament urging lawmakers to ratify the pending U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA) that would replace the North American Free Trade Agreement. Among other things, the USMCA reflects “the importance of data, technology, and innovation,” and would bar any country from …

AT&T Communications said on Thursday that starting now it will accept bill payment in cryptocurrency, making it the first mobile carrier, and one of the largest companies overall, to do so. The company, a unit of AT&T Inc., is using Atlanta-based processor BitPay Inc. to handle digital-currency payments. No information …

A five-year-old lawsuit brought by payday lenders against federal banking regulators over the government’s controversial Operation Choke Point ended with a settlement this week. Advance America, Cash Advance Centers Inc. (Advance America), and Check Into Cash had sued the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of the Comptroller of …

There’s nothing like mass transit to inculcate payment habits in consumers, so it’s no surprise the major card brands are scrambling to see that their products are part of the ongoing rollout of contactless payments in the nation’s biggest transit system, New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Starting May 31, …

Fraud attacks involving rogue mobile applications jumped nearly 300% in the first quarter from the preceding quarter, and fraudulent card-not-present transactions rose 17%, fraud-control services provider RSA Security says in a new report. Bedford, Mass.-based RSA says it flagged 41,313 attacks from rogue apps compared with 10,390 in 2018’s fourth …

TriMet, the transit agency for the Portland, Ore., region, said transit riders can now use its Hop Fastpass card in Apple Wallet and use their iPhones and Apple Watches to pay for fares on TriMet, C-TRAN, and Portland Streetcar lines. TriMet said Hop is the first transit fare to launch …

Two powerful forces for making contactless cards a routine feature of daily life are acceptance by mass-transit systems and backing from the biggest issuers. On Wednesday, that combination came into focus with an announcement from Visa Inc. that starting May 31 users of the 20 million contactless credit cards JPMorgan …

Gilbarco Veeder-Root said Citgo Petroleum Corp. released its EMV-acceptance Passport software for Citgo retailers to use in the forecourt. With this release, Gilbarco Veeder-Root said more than 70% of its Passport customers have forecourt EMV software available as upgrades. At a payments conference sponsored by The American Bankers Association, the …

The beaten-down shares of vending-machine payments provider USA Technologies Inc. jumped nearly 15% Tuesday on news that a hedge fund had taken a 12% stake in the company. In a regulatory filing, New York City-based Hudson Executive Capital LP said it believes USAT’s “shares are undervalued and are an attractive …

With momentum building to ban cashless stores, a rough consensus seems to be emerging that the United States will never have the cashless society futurists have predicted for decades as first cards, then e-commerce, and now mobile payments took root. To be sure, research released Tuesday by Square Inc. shows …