What impact might the PCI Security Standards Council’s recently released spec enabling PIN on glass transactions with commercially available, off-the-shelf devices have on mobile point-of-sale equipment sales? http://ow.ly/k2h030i1yQs #payments #survey
Read More »Starbucks Brews New Cards and Mulls Blockchain Technology
Investors gave Starbucks Corp. the cold shoulder Friday morning on news that despite a record $6.1 billion in quarterly revenues, growth is slowing in the United States. But the coffee giant’s payments business has several initiatives brewing, executives reported late Thursday. A leader in closed-loop prepaid cards and mobile payments …
Read More »The Beat Picks Up at Pulse as Discover’s Transaction Volume Grows
Last year was a year of revival for Discover Financial Services’ long-suffering Pulse debit network, which posted a 19% fourth-quarter increase in year-over-year dollar volume on 15% more transactions. The strong finish—$42.4 billion in volume on 1.03 billion transactions—brought Pulse’s full-year volume to $157.1 billion, up 14% from $138 billion …
Read More »The Democratization of Bitcoin: An ATM Network Appeals to Average Joes
Bitcoin may have slipped from the near $20,000 price it commanded a little over a month ago, but it’s still selling for around $11,000, nearly a dozen times its value a year ago. That’s drawing in plenty of investors and other high rollers, but it’s also attracting average citizens, including …
Read More »Pulse Volumes Increases 19% and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 1/25/18
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced changes to its controversial prepaid accounts rule and extended its effective date by one year, to April 2019. The changes will adjust error-resolution requirements for prepaid card providers and will make it easier for consumers to link credit card accounts to digital wallets, some …
Read More »The PCI Council Announces a Standard for Software-Based PIN Entry
For decades, merchants have had to install specially designed and built devices to allow customers to enter their personal identification numbers for debit card payments. And lately, that has been the case for EMV cards, as well. But on Wednesday, that changed as the PCI Security Standards Council published a …
Read More »NationPay Launches and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 1/24/18
Payments provider CCBill LLC completed an integration with DatingPro, which provides software for dating sites. NationPay, a blockchain-based payments startup, announced its launch. Twenty app markets, including Apple’s App Store and Alphabet’s Google Play, are still hosting 661 Bitcoin apps blacklisted by cybersecurity vendors because hackers use them to attempt …
Read More »Merchant Unit and a $136 Million Present From Uncle Sam Boost TSYS’s Bottom Line
Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) generated $1.1 billion in segment revenues from its Merchant Solutions unit in 2017, a 22.8% increase from $898.5 million in 2016, the Columbus, Ga.-based processor reported late Tuesday. That growth outpaced 2017’s revenue increases of 5.2% and 12.6%, respectively, in TSYS’s card-issuing and Netspend prepaid …
Read More »How a Movie-Ticket App Hopes to Make Voice Commerce a Main Attraction
With voice commerce expected to grow from 18 million users last year to 78 million by 2022, according to Business Insider, sellers of all sorts are starting to pay attention to the technology’s potential to create new transaction markets—and perhaps steal volume from mobile devices. Early enthusiasts for voice are …
Read More »FBI Data Show Fraudulent Online Sales of Cars and Outdoor Equipment, Funded by Gift Cards, Are Soaring
Fraudulent online sales of cars, recreational vehicles, boats, and outdoor equipment are soaring, with the scams typically funded through the victims’ gift cards, according to recent FBI data. A public-service announcement the FBI posted last week on its Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) Web site says the site received 26,967 complaints …
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