Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
• Four directors of cash-strapped Powa Technologies Ltd., including the startup’s founder and chief executive, Dan Wagner, were ousted from the board as long ago as Feb. 19, according to a report on BusinessInsider.com. The news follows the development on Thursday in which accounting firm Deloitte, appointed as administrator of the failed company, announced two of Powa’s three units are being sold off. Greenlight Digital is buying PowaWeb, the online-payments unit, and the PowaTag unit is being sold to entrepreneur Ben White. Terms were not disclosed, nor was there any word about the company’s third unit, PowaPOS. According to a report in TechCrunch, Deloitte also said a press release put out 15 days ago by Powa announcing that Thompson Investments was buying the firm had been disseminated by Wagner prematurely. Valued at $2.7 billion at its latest capital raise, Powa had just $250,000 in cash and $16.4 million in debt as of Feb. 1.
• Prepaid card provider Green Dot Corp. responded to a critical letter from investor Harvest Capital Strategies LLC saying “we certainly respect and value the opinions and views offered by Harvest Capital Strategies,” and that it is working to boost earnings and roll out new products. Harvest, which wants to oust Green Dot CEO Steve Streit, plans to nominate three directors at Green Dot’s annual meeting.
• Processor Fiserv Inc. completed its previously announced, $200 million acquisition of ACI Worldwide Inc.’s Community Financial Services business.
• As the Bitcoin community debates issues surrounding the growing digital currency’s impact on network capacity, some wallet providers are complaining that transactions are taking longer to process at so-called standard fees, according to a report in Coindesk. At least one Bitcoin-accepting merchant has said it will stop taking the currency until the issue is resolved. The issue has raised a question in the industry about whether wallets should programmatically allow for higher fees to gain priority on Bitcoin blocks.
• Patton Electronics Co., which provides cabling for fuel pumps, has developed a product that extends Ethernet connectivity over existing data lines to fuel pumps, aiding the data speed of EMV card readers installed in pumps.
• PDQ Signature Systems, a restaurant and quick-serve restaurant point-of-sale system developer, is using Datacap Systems Inc.’s NETePay software for EMV transactions.
• Mobile point-of-sale specialist Charge Anywhere LLC says its QuickSale for Windows payment application now supports EMV chip card payments.
• Elo Touch Solutions says its Elo PayPoint POS service for Android and iPad tablets has been certified by e-Nabler Corp.
