Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Retail ATM network owner and operator Cardtronics Inc. is testing ATMs as tall as nine feet that offer discounts to consumers when they withdraw cash at stores with Cardtronics machines and then make a purchase using a smart-phone app to access the reward. The ATMs and rewards are part of …
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COMMENTARY: How History Is Repeating Itself With Apple Pay
If you are an issuer of Visa or MasterCard, your deadline for participating in the Apple Pay service set to debut later this month has already passed. It was Tuesday, and issuers didn’t have much time to think about it (let alone perform a technical due diligence or negotiate terms). …
Read More »U.S. Mobile Payments Forecasted to Reach $3.5 Billion in 2014
Making a mobile payment is not commonplace yet, but the trend is heading that way, at least if a forecast from research firm eMarketer Inc. holds true. Mobile payments in the United States in 2014 are predicted to reach $3.5 billion, more than double the 2013 figure of $1.59 …
Read More »Heartland CEO Predicts Apple Pay Will Force MCX To Abandon Mobile-Wallet Exclusivity
Never one to mince words, Bob Carr, chief executive of the big merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc., predicts that demand for Apple Inc.’s new Apple Pay mobile-payment service will force the retailer-controlled Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) to abandon a policy of requiring its members to accept only MCX’s CurrentC …
Read More »Warning: The EMV Chip Card Conversion Will Be Slow and Fraught With Peril
The conversion of U.S. payment cards from the aging magnetic stripe to the Europay-MasterCard-Visa chip card standard will hardly be a seamless transition. That’s the word from a payments researcher and Canadian retail experts who spoke on a panel at a payments conference Tuesday near Chicago. The warnings came a …
Read More »The Gimlet Eye: NFC’s Day in the Sun
Well, it finally happened. Apple Inc. has included a near-field communication chip in new iPhone 6 and charged full-bore into the troubled world of mobile wallets (see our cover story to read all about it). To understand the significance of this event, you have to reflect on the history of …
Read More »Chip Cards Mean Cash for VeriFone
For years, leading U.S.-based terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc. has been anticipating the move away from magnetic-stripe cards to the Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip card standard. The conversion is guaranteed to induce a buying spree for point-of-sale hardware as well as the software that runs it. That’s the happy circumstance VeriFone …
Read More »Apple Swamps Twitter’s Buy Button
Believe it or not, companies other than Apple Inc. are doing new things in electronic payments nowadays. Just a day before the Sept. 9 mega-event at which Apple unveiled its iPhone 6, Apple Pay service, and Apple Watch (“Can Apple Save Mobile Wallets?”), Twitter Inc. disclosed it was starting a …
Read More »Prepaid for the Masses—of Banks, That Is
The general-purpose prepaid card market is hot, but most smaller financial institutions find it a daunting task to start and run a prepaid program. To fill that gap, Capital Prepaid Services last month launched a prepaid Visa card with two small banks as part of a campaign to make prepaid …
Read More »Acquiring: How To Fight Margin Compression
Acquirers don’t have to be locked in the classic race to the bottom. From referral networks to better training to integrated technology, here’s a raft of ideas aimed at taking the pressure off profits. It’s a universal lament of many merchant-acquirer and independent sales organization executives: Selling credit and debit …
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