• Visa Inc. announced its Visa Checkout digital wallet now has more than 12 million consumer accounts and is offered by more than 675 financial institutions in 16 countries. “Hundreds of thousands” of merchants now use the platform, Visa said, making Checkout one of the fastest-growing consumer products in the …

• WePay Inc. introduced a service that allows business-services platforms to offer card readers under their own brand to merchants for mobile acceptance of mag-stripe and EMV chip cards. Standard processing rate is 2.75% plus 30 cents. The first platforms to take advantage of the service are FreshBooks and Infusionsoft. …

U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., made his name in the payments business with an amendment to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act that put a cap on the debit card interchange big banks can earn. Now, he’s investigating the nation’s rocky EMV rollout with separate inquiries concerning snarled certification queues and the …

Payments startup Payzing Inc. is banking that a digital-currency integration with Uphold, a virtual funds and commodity platform, will lead to e-commerce success. San Francisco-based Payzing uses Uphold’s blockchain technology to offer online merchants an alternate payment method to traditional credit and debit cards. Consumers use their Uphold accounts to …

    By John Shlonsky, Senior Executive Vice President  & President, Merchant Services, TSYS In today’s dynamic payments environment, there are two vital components needed for ongoing growth. First, bring relevant products and services to the market. Then, provide operational excellence and support to the customers who use them. A …

• Groupon Inc. sold its Breadcrumb restaurant point-of-sale unit to Upserve Inc., a startup focusing on restaurant-management solutions. Terms were not disclosed, but Groupon will take an equity interest in Upserve, formerly known as Swipely Inc. Founded in 2011, Breadcrumb was acquired by Groupon in 2012. • Apple Inc.’s Apple …

• PayPal Holdings Inc. no longer will provide purchase protection for transactions made on crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter, potentially dealing a blow to the nascent crowdfunding industry, CNBC reported. • In a letter to Green Dot Corp. shareholders, Harvest Capital Strategies, which owns 9.3% of Green Dot, said it …

• Retailer Kohl’s says customers can now pay for purchases using their Kohl’s Charge accounts and earn points in its Yes2You Rewards program in approximately 250 stores with a single tap using Apple Pay. Kohl’s expects national availability later this month. Kohl’s says it is the first retailer to offer a …

MasterCard Inc. expects the first wearable payment devices for use on its network to be available later this year, Sherri Haymond, senior vice president for digital payments for MasterCard, tells Digital Transactions News. The devices are part of MasterCard’s Commerce for Every Device Program, which is intended to add payment …

• Imaging applications developer Mitek Systems Inc. said its Mobile Deposit service has processed more than 1 billion check deposits; more than 5,000 U.S. financial institutions and 70 million of their customers use Mobile Deposit. • Payments company Zooz closed on $24 million in funding that it will use for growth, …