Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
• Fast-food restaurant chain Chick-fil-A Inc. says it will begin accepting Apple Pay and Android Pay Friday at the point of sale inside its stores and in drive-through lanes. Chick-fil-A announced in February it would accept Apple Pay along with its own Quick Response bar code-based mobile-payment service.
• Wal-Mart Stores Inc. president and CEO Doug McMillon briefly mentioned Walmart Pay in a recorded call accompanying the giant retailer’s latest quarterly financials, saying “customers love the convenience” of the new mobile-payments service and that “a majority of transactions come from repeat users.” He gave no details. McMillon also said Wal-Mart is pleased with results from its test of Scan and Go, a mobile checkout and payment service at its Sam’s Club warehouse stores that lets customers skip the line. Wal-Mart expects to roll out the service nationwide later this year.
• HotHand Inc., a provider of technology for mobile payments and location-based marketing, announced it has been granted a U.S. patent “covering the association of one’s debit or credit card information with a mobile device to execute commercial transactions.”
• E-commerce security vendor ClearSale introduced a capability for online merchants to use real-time purchase behavior and historical data, including keyboard entry and mouse movements, to stop fraudsters who have accumulated enough stolen information to impersonate legitimate shoppers.
• Processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) said it has extended an agreement with Swisscard AECS GmbH to process the company’s consumer and commercial card portfolios and render other payments services.
• Some 74% of surveyed consumers who are not users of mobile banking say they are avoiding the service out of concerns over security, according to a survey of more than 1,000 consumers in the United States and the United Kingdom, of whom 36% were non-users. The survey was conducted by security firm Kaspersky Lab with IDC Financial Insights.
• The Merchant Risk Council announced results of elections for its global board of directors and American and European advisory boards.
• First Data Corp. said Ivo Distelbrink, a former Bank of America Merrill Lynch executive, has joined the processor and will lead its business in the Asia Pacific region.
