Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
• Bloomberg reported that prepaid card services provider Green Dot Corp. is in talks to buy UniRush, a smaller competitor co-founded by Russell Simmons, the music-industry entrepreneur behind the rap label Def Jam.
• In another possible deal, U.K.-based accounting and payroll software firm Sage Group plc is mulling a sale of its U.S. merchant-processing business, Bloomberg reported.
• Cross-border payments network PayCommerce said it completed the first phase of its real-time payments network following multiple test payments between the U.S. and India; commercialization of the service, which is built on a blockchain foundation, is planned by the end of the second quarter.
• The U.S. Payments Forum, formerly the EMV Migration Forum, released its “winter 2017 market snapshot” that gives an update on the U.S. chip card conversion; the trade group’s priorities for this year include accelerating merchant chip enablement and securing card-not-present payments.
• Point-of-sale technology provider Datacap Systems Inc. completed U.S. EMV level 3 certification with merchant acquirer Elavon and released an EMV-capable version of its NET ePay service for VeriFone Systems Inc.’s VX 805 PIN pad.
• Hyperledger, a cross-industry effort to advance blockchain technology, has added American Express Co. as a premier member.
• Early-stage Bitcoin-technology vendor Paxful has introduced what it calls a virtual Bitcoin kiosk, a widget that works within Web sites, blogs, mobile apps, and other applications and allows users to buy Bitcoin worldwide.
• Tracy Clay, formerly chargebacks and disputes manager for Royal Bank of Scotland, has joined Chargebacks911 at its new unit in the U.K. Chargebacks911 produces tools for chargeback management and risk mitigation.
• Rahul Gupta, formerly president of billing and payments at Fiserv Inc., has joined health-care billing specialist RevSpring as chief executive. Private-equity firm GTCR LLC acquired RevSpring in November.
