Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
• Rite Aid Corp. announced that American Express Co. cardholders now can use their Membership Rewards points for purchases at its drugstores. They also can use their Plenti points earned using the AmEx-backed coalition rewards service
• Growth in consumer revolving credit cooled off to a 5.2% seasonally adjusted annualized rate in September from August’s revised 7% growth rate, the Federal Reserve reported.
• Etsy Inc., a craft-oriented e-commerce site, said it accepts Apple Pay on the Web.
• Merchant processor Global Payments Inc. said it has an agreement with American Express to provide processing, settlement, reporting, and other services to small merchants accepting AmEx in the United Kingdom.
• Payments technology firm Network Merchants LLC said it has added real-time automated clearing house and account updater capabilities to its gateway for payment facilitators.
• Merchant processor Finical Inc. has acquired independent sales organization Safeguard Bankcard LLC and said it has entered into “binding agreements” to acquire two other unnamed companies. No purchase price was announced for the Safeguard deal.
• The Omnico Theme Park Barometer, which surveyed consumer experiences at U.S., U.K., and China theme parks, found that 77% of visitors wanted to pay for everything using cashless devices, such as a wristband or smart-phone app.
• Merchant processor Worldpay has agreed to provide payment acceptance for a patient check-in service called CheckinAsyst, offered by health-care technology company HealthAsyst.
• Merchant-financing specialist Kabbage Inc. named Amal Duggirala chief technology officer and Rama Rao as chief data officer. Duggirala previously worked at ACI Worldwide Inc. and Rao worked at eBay Inc. and PayPal.
