Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
• Fitness-band vendor Fitbit Inc. has acquired the wearable-payments assets of Coin in a deal that closed May 12 and includes relevant personnel and intellectual property. Terms were not disclosed. Coin, which was part of a wearable-payments initiative announced earlier this year by MasterCard Inc., is best-known for a device that lets consumers store and use digital version of multiple cards.
• Samsung Pay, the mobile-payments service from Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., now supports merchant membership and loyalty cards in its mobile wallet used on Samsung Galaxy smart phones.
• Mobile point-of-sale startup CardFlight said more than half of its merchants are accepting EMV cards. The company also announced it has been certified for EMV by merchant processor Global Payments Inc.
• Affirm Inc., which provides installment credit payment services, said Expedia.com and Eventbrite now offer the company’s service to their consumers, marking Affirm’s foray into travel and ticketing purchases. Affirm says it is a payment option at more than 700 retailers, and later this year the company anticipates launching additional financial services for consumers.
• GoldMoney Inc., whose technology allows electronic payments backed by gold, launched its Gold Payroll and Gold Payout applications for its BitGold business platform.
• Risk-management specialist Verifi Inc. announced a 113% increase in client accounts using its Cardholder Resolution Dispute Network, which links merchants directly to card issuers to try to resolve cardholder complaints without chargebacks.
• Chargeback.com, a unit of Chargeback Guardian LLC that provides fraud-management services, named Camille Mauerhan as senior vice president of sales.
• CardinalCommerce Corp., a card-not-present payments specialist, named Rick Ziolkowski as head of its data science and analytics group.
• The advent of connected cars, so-called smart homes, and other elements of the Internet of Things is generating more investment in cybersecurity to guard against fraud, according to Lux Research Inc. Venture-capital investment in this area shot up 78% in 2015 to $228 million and is expected to hit $400 million by the end of this year.
