Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
• Grocery store giant The Kroger Co. filed a federal lawsuit against Visa Inc. accusing the card network of trying to force it to allow customers to verify EMV debit card purchases with signatures, and thereby route transactions to the Visa network, rather than with PINs as Kroger prefers, The Wall Street Street Journal reported. Kroger claims Visa threatened to cut off its acceptance of debit cards and has fined it $7 million over the issue. Visa said it is reviewing the suit, which is the latest in an expanding battle between merchants and networks over chip card authentication and transaction routing.
• The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal from Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. to dismiss an antitrust lawsuit brought by a group of consumers and independent ATM operators that alleges the networks worked with three of the nation’s largest banks to illegally fix ATM fees. A federal district court had dismissed the suit, but an appellate court reinstated it last year.
• MasterCard Inc. announced a goal to link 40 million micro and small merchants to its network within five years as part of a financial-inclusion program for the unbanked announced last year.
• NCR Corp. says the Major Marine Tours boat-tour company is using its NCR Silver tablet-based point-of-sale system. NCR also released an updated version of NCR Counterpoint that now provides EMV-acceptance capabilities.
• TIO Networks Corp., which processes walk-in and kiosk-based bill payments, reported handling 14.9 million transactions worth $1.8 billion in the quarter ended April 30. The dollar value is up almost 12% year over year. TIO closed on its acquisition of walk-in bill-payment processor Softgate Systems Inc. during the quarter.
• The global bank messaging network SWIFT announced 73 banks around the world have joined its payments innovation initiative, which is aimed at improving cross-border payments. One goal of the initiative is a tracking service, similar to that offered by shipping companies, that will allow banks to give customers real-time information about payments from the time they are sent to the time they are received.
• Two payments companies, cross-border processor Planet Payment Inc. and imaging technology provider Mitek Systems Inc., joined the Russell 2000 Index of small-cap stocks.
• ICBA Bancard, the payment-services subsidiary of the Independent Community Bankers of America trade group, promoted executive vice president of operations and card risk Liang Han to EVP and chief operating officer.
• Data-security provider ControlScan said it now offers managed services for Cisco Meraki UTM Firewall devices.
