Western Union Adds Visa Direct and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 6/5/19

The Western Union Co. said it will enable Visa Inc.’s Visa Direct real-time push-payment service. The move follows the remittance-processing company’s announcement in late 2017 that it would adopt Mastercard Inc.’s rival service, Mastercard Send.
Merchant processor VizyPay launched a program called Cash Discount 2.0, which calls for merchants to raise their prices by 4%, with VizyPay using the increase to pay off payment-processing costs.
CellPoint Mobile, a payments provider for airlines and other travel companies, completed a $14-million equity-financing round provided by Toscafund Asset Management LLP and managed by Penta Capital, the private-equity unit of Toscafund.
Point-of-sale credit provider Afterpay said it has signed Levi’s, Ray-Ban, O’Neill, and Tarte Cosmetics as new clients.
Semafone, a provider of data-protection services for contact centers, said its Cardprotect payment service is now available as a cloud-based product.
E-commerce processor Shopify Inc. released its first “State of Commerce” report that draws insights from sales trends in a subsection of Shopify’s global transaction data, an online survey of 3,832 merchants, and a survey of 2,653 U.S. and Canadian consumers.
Payrailz, a payments provider to banks and credit unions, announced the appointment of payments veteran Jim Kern to the position of vice president and chief sales officer.

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