Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
• China-based UnionPay International says more than 41 million merchants and more than 2 million ATMs in 160 countries and regions now accept its UnionPay card, as do 10-million-plus Web-based merchants. More than 80% of U.S. merchants accept the card, the company says.
• Point-of-sale terminal maker Equinox Payments said processor First Data Corp. certified its Apollo terminal to accept EMV chip card transactions through its Omaha platform. The terminal’s Voyager payment application supports retail, restaurant, and lodging merchants.
• Volante Technologies unveiled its VolPay Hub: RTP Suite, a product to enable banks to integrate and process payments through The Clearing House Payments Co.’s real-time payments service currently in development. The hub will be tested by a Top 10 U.S. bank and The Clearing House.
• ACI Worldwide Inc. announced it is providing a mobile-checkout solution for Peach Payments, a South African payment-service provider.
• Merchant processor iPayment Inc. has appointed Denise Tahali senior vice president for ISO and direct-agent sales. Tahali comes to the company from First Data Corp.
• Flow, a 2-year-old, cloud-based cross-border payments platform, secured a $13 million Series A investment from Bain Capital Ventures.
• Customer Engagement Technologies is integrating its PaySwag mobile app with Sionic Mobile’s ION Commerce Engine to allow underbanked consumers to load cash into a mobile wallet and earn rewards on Sionic’s Mobile Rewards Marketplace. JPMorgan Chase & Co. is providing credit and debit card processing, as well.
• Germany’s Wirecard AG said it has a deal with Citigroup Inc. to buy Citi’s merchant-acquiring business in 11 Asia-Pacific markets; the portfolio includes more than 20,000 merchants. Last year Citi sold its institutional Prepaid Card Services unit to Wirecard.
• A startup called Payix is offering white-label mobile management tools and payment processing for auto dealers and lenders. The company is a registered independent sales organization of Deutsche Bank AG, New York, and relies on processing from First Data Corp. though it operates its own payment gateway.
• LocoMobi Inc. has introduced a pair of mobile apps called ParkingPaid and RideRefund that allow merchants to pay all or part of a customer’ s transportation cost to the merchant’ s store in return for meeting a minimum purchase requirement.
