The twin imperatives for independent sales organizations these days are to get bigger fast and to collaborate with independent software vendors, Todd Linden, chief executive of Paysafe North America, tells Digital Transactions News. Linden, a veteran acquiring-industry executive, should know. Paysafe North America’s parent company, London-based Paysafe Holdings UK Ltd., …

Boosted by the rapid rise of chip card payments in Asia and the United States, more than half of general-purpose credit and debit cards worldwide now have an EMV chip, EMVCo reported Thursday. Plus, nearly two-thirds of card-present transactions now involve an EMV card being read by a point-of-sale terminal that …

Mastercard Inc. says it is preparing for a better online payments experience by backing the EMVCo secure remote commerce specification. Visa Inc., too, says it supports the spec. The specification, announced in November, establishes the technical framework for enabling consumers to use their payment cards across channels more easily than …

NCR Corp. is the top provider of multivendor software for ATMs globally, according to U.K.-based research firm RBR. The company controls 32% of the installed base of 1.3 million machines running the software, 12 points higher than the second-place vendor. EMVCo, the chip card standards organization owned by the major …

Boosted by higher cardholder spending, American Express Co.’s discount revenue grew 9% in the first quarter despite a year-over-year decline in its average worldwide discount rate. AmEx reported late Wednesday that discount revenue hit $5.89 billion compared with $5.39 billion a year earlier. Discount revenue is by far AmEx’s largest …

What impact can fraud-prevention services have on merchant retention? Apparently, quite a bit, finds the “State of Payment Processing & Fraud: 2018 Report” from Kount Inc. Kount, a Boise, Idaho-based risk-management technology provider, found that 75% of approximately 150 payment-processor respondents say offering fraud-control tools improved merchant retention. The high …

So far, neither near-field communication nor blockchain has been a blockbuster technology for payments in the U.S. market, but now developers are working on combining the two in a way they hope will give cryptocurrencies a big boost at the point of sale. The idea is to create a standard …

American Express Co. disclosed Monday that it will end its multi-merchant Plenti rewards program on July 10. AmEx announced the closure through a tweet on the Plenti Twitter feed and on Plenti’s Web site. “While Plenti has grown in scale since its launch, a number of factors, including shifting priorities …

Klarna Inc. is bringing another of its buy now/pay later products to the U.S. market this summer with broader availability later in the year. That’s the word from Jim Lofgren, chief executive of Klarna Inc., the North American arm of the Sweden-based online payments firm. Lofgren, speaking to Digital Transactions …

E-commerce platform 3dcart said its integration with payments provider PayJunction now includes automated clearing house transaction processing, remote signature capture, and tokenized cards on file services. In a bid to help merchants serve Japanese tourists, point-of-sale vendor Equinox Payments has added contactless support for JCB cards to its Apollo, L5000, …