Blackhawk Network Inc., a major player in merchant-branded prepaid cards, just gained an even bigger foothold in that market with its $175-million, all-cash acquisition of CashStar Inc., a 10-year-old firm specializing in digital gift cards. Announced Wednesday morning the dealbrings to Pleasanton, Calif.-based Blackhawk a platform enabling mrchants to market …

Consumers have a new option when choosing a fitness device that’s capable of making a contactless payment. Fitbit Inc., a San Francisco-based maker of fitness trackers, announced its Ionic smart watch Monday that includes Fitbit Pay, the company’s first foray into contactless payments. Fitbit Pay, which will be available when …

Target Corp. has integrated its popular Cartwheel couponing app into its main mobile app in preparation for introducing mobile-payment functionality based on quick-response codes, TechCrunch reports, though Target’s deadline for introducing payments on the app is “in flux”and may slip into early next year, according to the online news service. Golden …

Fitbit introduced its first smart watch, the Ionic, which features contactless-payment capability. Over the coming months users can add tokenized American Express Co. cards as well as Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. credit and debit cards from certain banks around the world, including Bank of America, Capital One, HSBC, and U.S. Bank in the United States, …

After chastising the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for way it handled itself in its 2015 lawsuit against allegedly fraudulent debt collectors and their payment processors, a federal judge on Friday threw out the CFPB’s claims against the processors. The case is unusual in that Judge Richard W. Story of U.S. …

Can the new version of 3D Secure fix the faults of the old one and stem the steady rise of e-commerce fraud? The answer is a big maybe—and here’s why. It has been nearly two decades since the card-network brands introduced 3-Domain Secure 1.0 in an attempt to offer a …

USA Technologies Inc., a provider of payment services for vending machines and other unattended merchant locations, said Tuesday the number of connections in its ePort network grew 32% year-over-year to 568,000 as of June 30, and transaction volume nearly as much. The Malvern, Pa.-based firm also reported net income of …

It’s what some may consider a bold forecast for contactless payments in the United States, but Juniper Research is predicting that, by 2022, 34% of electronic payments will be contactless, up from less than 2% in 2017. United Kingdom-based Juniper released its forecast Monday in a report called “POS and …

The political coroner has made an official pronouncement: Operation Choke Point is dead. The controversial program begun in 2013 by the U.S. Department of Justice during the administration of President Barack Obama aimed to deny payment services to fraudulent telemarketers, payday lenders, and other suspect merchants. It generated massive controversy for …

Tablet-based point-of-sale provider Revel Systems announced Thursday it will offer data-integration services from Dsync to its merchants. Australia-based Dsync provides systems-integration services that enable businesses to view disparate types of data in a single Web-based site. For example, Dsync says it can connect systems used to manage inventory, payments, e-commerce sites, …