Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
• Payments provider Dwolla Inc. announced a $6.85 million round of funding led by Union Square Ventures and Foundry Group. The funds will be used to expand sales and account-management operations at the company’s Des Moines, Iowa office. Dwolla also said it is moving its white-label products into a new collection of application programming interfaces for the automated clearing house, called Access API. More features will be added over time to Access API to make it easier to build software and link it to the banking system, says founder Ben Milne in a blog post.
• Data from the Identity Theft Resource Center and CyberScout found 1,093 data breaches in 2016, a 40% increase from the 780 reported in 2015. Breaches among the banking, credit, and financial sector accounted for 4.8% of the 2016 total.
• Varo Money Inc., a mobile-banking app aimed at millennials, announced it is making consumer lending available through its app in several states. In December, the company said it is working with developer Kasisto Inc. on a chatbot to assist its customers.
• Sunshine Capital Inc., which says it is holding 4 billion Dibcoins in is portfolio, has posted a manual on the Dibcoin.us Web site to explain the cryptocurrency and how businesses could accept it for payment.
• LocoMobi Inc. said the Chicago Skyway Toll Bridge will use the company’s license-plate recognition and payments technology to charge the road’s more than 14 million annual users.
• First Annapolis Consulting Inc., which specializes in payments and finance, promoted three analysts to principals of the firm.
