Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Steve Mott When EMV stalled last year, a battle royal erupted across the payments business to draft the rules for a key security technology. Here’s who’s winning—and whether that’s a good thing for the industry. The spate of mag-stripe-based data breaches over the holidays sent the industry into convulsions and …
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Components: A Dongle Do-over
Kevin Woodward Mobile card readers face the switch to EMV. With as many as 5 million mobile point-of-sale readers in circulation in the United States, mobile POS companies will have their hands full preparing for the liability shift set for October 2015. That’s when the nation’s payment card networks step …
Read More »Mercury Payment Systems Files Registration Statement for Possible IPO
The merchant-acquiring industry might soon get another publicly traded company should independent sales organization Mercury Payment Systems Inc. follow through on plans to sell a minority stake in the company. n Mercury Payment Systems Inc.’s operating subsidiary, Mercury Payment Systems LLC, currently is 62% owned by an affiliate of private-equity …
Read More »Pulse Deal Gives Visa’s Common AID Nearly Universal Enablement for Chip Debit Transactions
Discover Financial Service’s Pulse subsidiary last week became the latest debit network to license Visa Inc.’s so-called common application identifier (AID) on soon-to-be-issued Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip debit cards. This latest agreement means Visa’s common AID will be enabled on cards that account for nearly 90% of U.S. PIN-debit transactions. The …
Read More »Burger King Has Its Way With a New Mobile-Payments and Loyalty App
It may perennially trail McDonald’s Corp. among the leading U.S. hamburger chains, but Burger King Worldwide Inc. is on track to take the lead in mobile payments. Miami-based Burger King this week said it plans to roll out a smart phone app offering mobile payments and digital-coupons beginning in April. …
Read More »2Checkout Ditches ‘Archaic, Slow’ System for a Speedier Merchant-Approval Process
Patience is not an online virtue for consumers, and, it appears, for merchants waiting for online approval of their payment-processing account applications. At least that’s the assessment of Tom Dailey, chief executive of 2Checkout, a Columbus, Ohio-based e-commerce payment-services company, which announced this week it has revised its underwriting …
Read More »Look Within Thyself for the Most Effective Fraud-Prevention Solutions, Some Merchants Say
The coming of Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip cards to the U.S. has many American merchants worried about the inevitable shift of credit and debit card fraud from the point of sale to online channels. EMV cards, while highly effective in thwarting counterfeiting and related card-present fraud, offer no more fraud protection …
Read More »Now Hawking iPads for POS, NCR Silver Mulls a Purpose-Built Tablet with its Own Stamp
NCR Corp.’s announcement this week that it has updated its iPad-based point-of-sale system, which it sells as NCR Silver, to support loyalty programs shone a spotlight on one of the few tablet POS products that comes from a major corporation in a market that has attracted a raft of startups. …
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AmEx Opts for Small Merchants No longer a card brand accepted mainly in hotels, restaurants, upscale stores, and on airlines, American Express Co. is stepping up its efforts to add small merchants to its acceptance base. AmEx late last year began testing a program called OptBlue that gives partner merchant …
Read More »Acquiring: The Tech Touch—And the Human Touch
Kevin Woodward Small-business owners want new technology that helps them grow their businesses. But they also want a sympathetic ear and a ready smile. How merchant sales has changed—and hasn’t changed. The small-business owner has been the bread-and-butter client for many independent sales organizations and acquirers, but in the midst …
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