Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

As the Federal Reserve prepares to raise interest rates for what would be the fifth time this year, U.S credit card holders are already feeling the squeeze. Some 60% of all cardholders are not only in debt to the issuer, they have been in debt for a year or more, …

Visa Inc. announced late Wednesday it has now issued more network tokens than there are physical Visa cards, eight years after the launch of the Visa Token Service. With a boom in e-commerce and other digital applications, the service has now issued more than 4 billion tokens, Visa said, almost …

OrbaGraph, a payment automation firm, said Revenue Management Solutions acquired the company. Private equity firm Thompson Street Capital Partners funded the acquisition. Terms were not disclosed.Dan Price, cofounder of Gravity Payments, which set a minimum starting annual salary of $70,000 for his employees and cut his salary from $1 million …

MoneyGram International Inc. said its MoneyGram Online digital service had second quarter revenue of $53.3 million, up 13% from $47 million in the same quarter in 2021. Its overall revenue of $329.6 million in the quarter, was up slightly from $329.3 million revenue in the 2021 second quarter. MoneyGram posted a …

Shift4 Payments Inc. has long made no secret of its plans to expand the average size of the merchants it serves, but early on Thursday its chief executive made the company’s overarching strategy crystal clear following recent signings of such international clients as Time Inc. and SpaceX’s Starlink satellite business, …

With the introduction in Congress on Thursday of a bill that attacks rising credit card acceptance costs, lobbyists for both sides of the issue lost no time firing broadsides, pro and con, over the matter. The legislation, co-sponsored by Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Roger Marshall, R-Kan., seeks to ratchet down …

Mastercard Inc. executives are paying close attention to a new proposal in the U.S. Congress that could alter merchant choice in routing credit card payments. Concurrently, its earnings are riding the crest of a wave that includes consumer spending and the resurgence in travel. A bipartisan bill sponsored by senators Richard …

With a pair of U.S. Senators preparing to introduce a bill that would allow merchants to process Visa and Mastercard credit card payments over other networks, payments experts reached by Digital Transactions News are sharply divided on the idea. The bipartisan bill, sponsored by Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Roger Marshall, …

Network volumes and interchange revenues posted hefty increases at American Express Co. in the second quarter as consumers and businesses spent more while a recovery continues from the Covid-19 pandemic that hit two years ago. AmEx reported Friday that its network volumes totaled $394.8 billion in the quarter ending June …

Payactiv Inc., a payments provider said to have pioneered the field of earned-wage access, said late Thursday it is scrapping its access fees. The move makes several of the company’s options, including automated clearing house transfers, “completely free,” the San Jose, Calif.-based company says. Payactiv’s action follows a move this …

Bitcoin Depot, a Bitcoin ATM operator, launched BDCheckout, an app that lets users in North America load cash to their Bitcoin Depot digital wallets, which can then be used to buy Bitcoin. Bitcoin Depot is working with InComm Payments’ VanillaDirect barcode platform to offer the service.The big French processor Worldline S.A. said …

Network tokenization is a term that’s quickly been finding its way into the fintech and payments spaces, and that’s for good reason, given consumers’ awareness regarding data breaches and security. So, what is it exactly? Tokenization is what major payment networks like Visa, MasterCard, and Discover use to replace primary …

Price inflation is rising at its fastest rate since the early 1980s, and that’s prompting dueling releases from both foes and advocates of card interchange, the fee merchants pay when consumers use credit and debit cards. Merchant groups have long inveighed against interchange—also referred to as “swipe fees”—as a cost …

With restaurants scrambling to launch digital-payment options and a bevy of firms eager to satisfy that demand, the technology giant Oracle Corp. on Tuesday launched its Oracle Food and Beverage Payment Cloud Service. The Redwood Shores, Calif.-based company bills the new product as standing alone in offering contactless payments and …

The Judiciary Committee of the U.S. Senate heard testimony Wednesday from witnesses both for and against regulation of credit card interchange. Speakers represented a supermarket chain, merchant groups, Mastercard and Visa, and a bank. The hearing showed that “while more Democrats than Republicans likely would support greater intervention in the …

The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC announced it will soon introduce tokenization for checking account and routing numbers on transactions financial institutions run over TCH’s RTP real-time payments and EPN automated clearing house networks.Of 80 mid-tier U.S. financial institutions surveyed by Volante Technologies, 37% of these not already connected to The Clearing …

One of the country’s biggest merchant associations on Monday joined a growing chorus of voices arguing fee increases planned by the major card networks for this month will exacerbate inflation. “American consumers are struggling under the worst inflation in four decades, and these increases would only make the situation worse,” …

Revolut Ltd. continues its expansion in the United States, announcing on Friday it is partnering with technology infrastructure provider Cross River Bank to expand access to financial services to Revolut customers in the U.S. and enable Revolut to scale and expand across business verticals in the country, including credit.  As …

The microchip shortage that has plagued point-of-sale terminal makers since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic shows no signs of abating. Despite forecasts that chip supply would not begin to start catching up to demand until mid-2022, terminal makers should continue to plan for shortages at least through 2023, according …

Customer checkout, whether online or at a store, can be taken for granted by merchants and payments firms alike. That’s a big mistake, according to a panel of experts who spoke Wednesday about new opportunities—and threats—lurking in checkout buttons.  For one thing, checkouts can represent a battleground in which players …