Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
• Starbucks Corp. says mobile payment represented 24% of total U.S. tender in fiscal 2016’s second quarter, and the coffee company’s Mobile Order & Pay service accounted for 4% of total transactions, or about 8 million per month, up 40% from the first quarter. • Citing a “large increase” in fraudulent …
April, 2016
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22 April
As More Mobile Wallets Crowd in, Wal-Mart Updates Its Shopping App With Walmart Pay
Walmart Pay, the mobile-payments app developed by Wal-Mart Stores Inc., is now broadly available to consumers as part of version 6.8 of the retailing titan’s shopping app, introduced this week for Apple Inc. smart phones. The app update, available on the iTunes store, says Walmart Pay will be “available in …
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21 April
First Data Debuts Clover E-Commerce Site Tool and Samsung Pay Lines Up POS Aid
First Data Corp. is taking its Clover brand, known until now as a mobile point-of-sale service, to the Web with a launch May 3 of the Clover Online Store. Announced Wednesday at Transact16, the Electronic Transactions Association’s annual conference in Las Vegas, the service enables merchants to set up an …
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21 April
Eye on Data Breaches: A ‘Scary’ Legal Standard; Details Released on the Coming PCI Update
As federal regulators increasingly zero in on data breaches, lawyers at a payments conference on Wednesday warned that organizations that suffer breaches are likely to have a tougher time avoiding legal liability in the years ahead. And the PCI Security Standards Council disclosed some of the major changes in its …
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21 April
PowaPOS Sold and other Digital Transactions News briefs
• SuperCom Ltd., an Israel-based identity-verification company, bought PowaPOS, the tablet-based point-of-sale unit of Powa Technologies Ltd., a commerce company that floundered. Powa’s two other units, PowaWeb and PowaTag, already have been sold. • American Express Co. reported $176.3 billion in U.S. card-billed business during the first quarter, up 4% from a …
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21 April
Visa Inc. Revises Deal To Acquire Visa Europe, and Pays More for Client Incentives
Visa Inc. will be paying more upfront cash to acquire Visa Europe Ltd., and it paid more in client incentives in the quarter ending March 31. But the leading payment card network still managed to turn a tidy profit and saw double-digit increases in U.S. transaction volumes even though volume …
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20 April
Eye on Charge Volume: Pulse’s Volume Slips 15%; U.S. Bank’s Merchant Income Rises
Total charge volume on Discover Financial Services’s networks fell 5% in the first quarter thanks to a 15% drop at the Discover-owned Pulse electronic funds transfer network. But U.S. Bancorp, which owns the big merchant acquirer Elavon, says its merchant-processing revenue increased 4% due to higher transaction volumes and sales …
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20 April
MPC Disputes Durbin Findings and other Digital Transactions News briefs
• The Merchants Payments Coalition, a lobbying group for merchants on payment issues, attacked a Harvard University research paper as “just plain wrong” after the paper argued the debit-interchange caps in the Durbin Amendment to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act drove up banking costs for consumers. • Terminal maker Ingenico Group …
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19 April
Visa Tweaks Chip Card Processing Protocol; Says EMV Debit Cards Now Surpass Their Credit Brethren
Many consumers and merchants adjusting to using newly-issued EMV credit and debit cards may undergo a perception versus reality check as Visa Inc. prepares to debut its Quick Chip for EMV program. Visa also provided updated chip card issuing and acceptance data. Announced Tuesday, the program enables consumers to remove …
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19 April
Banks Must Stop Being ‘the Quiet Party’ in the Mobile-Wallet Battle, an Expert Warns
Despite all the fuss the payments industry is making over mobile wallets, financial institutions have been remarkably low-key. With the notable exception of giants like JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Capital One Financial Corp., nearly all banks and credit unions have ceded the initiative to nonbank players like Apple Inc., …