Interac Fraud at Record Low and other Digital Transactions News briefs

• In separate blog posts, PayPal Holdings Inc. executive vice president Bill Ready and chief executive Dan Schulman reported the company has reached 200 million total consumer, merchant, and charity accounts. They also said the PayPal’s One Touch authentication technology has signed up 50 million consumers and more than 5 million merchant accounts, including three-quarters of the top 100 U.S. online retailers.

• Interac, the Canadian debit network, said its losses due to skimming reached a record low of $11.4 million (US$8.6 million) in 2016. Only $1.5 million of that fraud happened in Canada. Interac said it appears criminals are taking their fraud outside of Canada to non-chip markets and to card-not-present transactions, which aren’t permitted by Interac in Canada.

• Wal-Mart Stores Inc. unveiled expanded features on its mobile app, including the ability for customers to pre-fill needed information for money transfers rather than filling out paperwork in the store.

• Mobile-transactions processor Apriva said it is working with golf-management and -marketing firm foreUP to offer what the companies call “all-in-one” EMV payment solutions for golf courses using Apriva’s EMV gateway.

• Gift card processor CashStar Inc. and gift card marketplace Raise announce they are working together to offer retailers help with using the marketplace to manage their brands and reduce risk.

• StayNTouch Inc., a hotel property-management software developer, said its system now supports Ingenico Group’s iCMP mobile point-of-sale terminal.

• Los Angeles-based Verifi Inc., a payment processor and risk-management provider for online merchants, reported “significant” growth for its operations in the United Kingdom. The company began operating in the U.K. in mid-2016.

• Payment and banking solutions provider ACI Worldwide Inc. said the National Payment Corp. of Vietnam, the national switch for that country, has adopted its UP eCommerce Payments product.

• Ingenico ePayments has produced a paper for online merchants looking to expand internationally. The paper is entitled “Growing Faster with Cross-Border eCommerce.”

• In related news, a study commissioned by Ingenico ePayments and NTT Data Inc. showed fast-growing businesses are more likely than slower-growing ones to accept in-app mobile payments, which are tied to both revenue growth and profit growth. The survey of 2,000 consumers and 300 business executives around the world was conducted by Oxford Economics and Charney Research.

• The ATM Industry Association released a paper called “ATM Cyber Security Briefing Paper.”