Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Merchants battling debit card pricing and routing rules suffered another defeat on Tuesday. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a petition from a merchant group seeking to have the high court hear its arguments against Federal Reserve rules regulating debit card interchange and transaction routing. The move leaves intact a lower-court …

By Jim Daly After a hiatus of more than three years, vending machines that get payment services through USA Technologies Inc. will soon be accepting MasterCard Inc.’s debit cards again as the result of an agreement between the two companies that USA Technologies announced Friday. Under the three-year agreement, “MasterCard …

No one can say for sure why the price of Bitcoin has dived sharply since the turn of the year, but that doesn’t mean market observers don’t have theories. These range from rampant short selling to the hack last week at Bitcoin exchange Bitstamp, in which crooks siphoned out $5.2 …

NACHA on Tuesday opened for comment a sweeping proposal to introduce a same-day settlement mechanism for the automated clearing house network. The comment period will run through Feb. 6, the regulatory body for the ACH announced. If the proposal is approved, the ACH network will process almost 1.4 billion same-day …

While governments and established payments networks around the world reckon with Bitcoin, the upstart digital currency has itself had to reckon this year with volatility that has seen its price plunge about 50% since its $700-plus January high. But in other respects, Bitcoin is riding high. One of the latest …

  When negotiating a merchant-portfolio acquisition, buyers and sellers may want to examine more than the usual terms and conditions for elements that could affect the value, and potential, of the portfolio, advises an analyst. While there are obvious terms to look for, such as those directly related to ownership …

By John Stewart The advent of younger users, combined with the rise of smart phones and a much-improved user experience, is helping to drive a surge in mobile person-to-person payments. But providers still haven’t figured out how to make money on the service, which lets consumers use smart phones to …

Issuers signing up to have their cards included in the Apple Pay wallet may benefit from all the hype Apple Inc. is generating for the new mobile-payment service. But behind the scenes, the 500 or so financial institutions that have enlisted in the program so far are also signing up …

In what appears to be the largest tablet-based point-of-sale deployment yet, the entire 700-store Smoothie King Franchises Inc. chain will convert to a system from San Francisco-based Revel Systems Inc. The Covington, La.-based chain, which sells blended drinks, snacks, and supplements, is replacing existing checkout registers with Apple iPads linked …

The Federal Reserve Board on Thursday said it would leave its debit card interchange cap for large issuers unchanged despite finding that some of their important expenses either declined last year or had changed little from levels found by an earlier survey. A major retailer trade group said the findings …

Apple Inc.’s introduction of its new Apple Pay service for its soon-to-be released iPhone 6 and the Apple Watch raised a huge number of questions in the payments industry. One of the biggest topics of speculation is just how is Apple going to make money from the service, with combines …

Ever since the carrier-billing model for mobile payments found a foothold in the digital-goods market several years ago, processors have tested various tactics to broaden the range of goods the model could be applied to. The latest example is San Francisco-based Boku Inc. and its announcement Thursday that it will …

MasterCard Inc. is planning new “digital enablement” fees, one for merchant acquirers and the other for card issuers, that will generate revenue for the network as mobile payments and the use of tokens that substitute for actual payment card numbers increase. The fees are outlined in recent MasterCard bulletins for …

  Vantiv Inc.’s $1.65 billion acquisition in May of Mercury Payment Systems LLC appears to be paying off already. In the second quarter, Cincinnati-based Vantiv said Mercury accounted for approximately 5% of the payment processor’s net revenue growth. Vantiv’s second-quarter revenue increased 11.6% to $331.3 million from $296.9 million a …

Non-bank ATM operators, which run an estimated 52% of the nation’s approximately 412,000 ATMs, are struggling to maintain profitability as revenues come under pressure and costs continue to rise, according to a recent study of U.S. ATM deployers by Tremont Capital Group Inc. and the ATM Industry Association. On the …

Merchants that elected not to take a share of the $5.7 billion settlement to resolve a massive credit card interchange case against Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc. and some banks will be given a chance to opt back into a share of the damages under a plan being crafted by lawyers. …

Two MasterCard Inc. rules governing fee changes and disclosures may catch many in the payment industry unaware even though the rules first became known in December. That is the assessment of attorneys Howard Herndon and Josh Rosenblatt at Frost Brown Todd LLC, a Nashville, Tenn.-based firm. “Typically, acquiring banks and …

The startup that popularized a cloud-based approach to mobile payments using near-field communication (NFC) on Monday opened to card issuers and mobile-application providers a developer platform that could make it cheaper and easier to include digital cards in mobile apps. The platform, from Austin, Texas-based SimplyTapp Inc., offers tools specific …

Two retailer organizations dissatisfied with a $5.7 billion settlement of a class-action antitrust case alleging unfair credit card interchange rates have filed the next step in their appeal of the settlement. The National Retail Federation and the Retail Industry Leaders Association said Monday they filed a joint brief with the …

Transactional credit providers have been few and far between. Bill Me Later launched 14 years ago and was snapped up by eBay Inc. in 2008. BillFloat Inc. started up four years ago and has changed its name to Better Finance Inc. It’s a challenging business requiring close attention to funding costs and …