Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Rather than jumping to conclusions about the implications of Square Inc.’s decision last week to implement a Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip card solution that forgoes PINs and instead relies on a signature at the point of sale, it’s important to first ask the question: Why would a payments disruptor and tech …
Read More »Type of Merchant, Customer Base Dictate Which Merchants Should Act First on EMV
With a major deadline arriving in October 2015, U.S. payments players are expected to be busy in the coming months converting systems to be compliant with the Europay-MasterCard-Visa chip card standard. But with liability for counterfeit card fraud shifting in 14 months to the party not prepared for EMV, how …
Read More »Square Announces a Signature-Based Chip Card Reader, with Availability Early in 2015
Square Inc. on Wednesday ended months of speculation with an announcement that it will begin offering an EMV card reader early next year. Square will start taking orders for the device, which will process chip-and-signature as well as mag-stripe transactions, later this year, the San Francisco-based company said. The move comes …
Read More »Fearing Payment-Industry Control, Merchants Call for an ‘Open’ Tokenization Standard
Merchant groups and payment-industry members both want to use tokenization to make it tougher for criminals to get to sensitive cardholder data, but a disagreement has erupted about the best way to do that. On Monday, the Food Marketing Institute, Merchant Advisory Group, National Association of Convenience Stores, National …
Read More »Making a Decent Profit Gets Tougher for Retail ATM Deployers
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 …
Read More »Spurred by Fraud and Fear, Debit Card Issuers Cast Aside Their EMV Reservations
Nothing like a good data breach to serve as a kick in the pants. Thanks in part to Target Corp.’s breach that compromised 40 million payment cards, debit card issuers are committing themselves to the Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip card standard to a much greater extent than they did a year …
Read More »Estimates Vary, But There’s No Doubt: EMV Cards Soon Will Be in Millions More Wallets
The conversion of U.S. magnetic-stripe credit and debit cards to the Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip card standard is about to shift into high gear, and the payments forecasters are busier than their counterparts at The Weather Channel just before a hurricane’s landfall. The EMV Migration Forum, an affiliate of the Princeton …
Read More »EMV Acceptance Likely To Get A Boost When Walmart Chip Cards Begin Showing Up
The debut this summer and later in the year of chip cards for cardholders of Walmart and Sam’s Club branded credit cards likely will spur other retailers to accept the new payment card technology. That’s the finding from a Digital Transactions News survey that asks if the issuance of …
Read More »Sam’s Club And Walmart To Offer MasterCard-branded EMV Cards
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will be among the first retailers, if not the first, to offer store-branded credit cards with Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chips when its new cards bearing a MasterCard Inc. logo are issued this month. That’s well in advance of an October 2015 deadline from the major card networks …
Read More »VeriFone To Cut Its Headcount by 500 as Recovery Plan Takes Shape
Point-of-sale terminal maker and payment-services provider VeriFone Systems Inc. says it will cut its worldwide workforce by 500 full-time-equivalent employees, or about 9%, by year’s end as it continues to streamline operations in a fast-changing payments market. While it will be paying $30 million in severance, the San Jose, Calif.-based …
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