Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Visa Inc. is leveraging its sponsorship of the National Football League with a new one-day promotion geared to attract small businesses to its Authorize.Net payment gateway on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 7. Visa announced Tuesday that it will waive Authorize.Net’s monthly gateway fee for the life of an account, along …

In a wide-ranging session, American Express Co.’s top brass Tuesday expressed optimism that increasing availability of coronavirus vaccines will soon induce consumers to travel and that the new Biden Administration’s policies are unlikely to have much impact on the New York City-based company’s core business. On an early morning conference …

NCR Corp. entered into a definitive agreement Monday to acquire ATM network operator Cardtronics plc for $39 a share in an all-cash transaction valued at $2.5 billion, including debt. The deal, which NCR plans to finance with cash on hand and financing from Bank of America N.A., is projected to …

Much has been written over the years about the seemingly unending succession of data breaches involving credit card and other personal payment data. But little is known about the so-called dark Web, the sites where these data thieves set up shop to sell what they’ve pilfered. It turns out these …

Professional Datasolutions Inc., which provides software, including payments services, to convenience stores and gasoline wholesalers, announced Monday it has reached an agreement with c-store and gas-station operator EG Group to expand the use of its payment technology to about 1,700 EG Group sites across the United States. The agreement builds …

CardFlight Inc., a provider of payment hardware and software-as-a-service payment applications, announced Wednesday a major product line expansion into the burgeoning market for countertop point-of-sale devices that can function as cash-register replacements. The new line of terminals, on which merchants can run CardFlight’s SwipeSimple software, includes a trio of models …

Count down the 10 most popular stories published in the Digital Transactions News daily newsletter in 2020. #10 Processor Paya Will Go Public Via a So-Called SPAC Merger (Aug. 3) #9 Feeling Heat, Square Explains Its New Reserve Policy (June 23) #8 After Beating Wells Fargo Twice in Court, USAA …

With a second round of federal stimulus payments having passed Congress, payments firms are lining up to help recipients speed the funds’ availability. PayPal Holdings Inc., for example, said late Tuesday it will waive the fees for stimulus recipients that it normally charges consumers to cash checks using its app. …

The confluence of digital payments and economic hardship during the Covid-19 pandemic has led another major supermarket chain to offer SNAP EBT acceptance through its mobile app and on its Web site for curbside pickup and home-delivery orders. H-E-B, with 329 stores in Texas and another 55 in Mexico, said …

A class of 46 million consumers in the United Kingdom cleared a major hurdle last week when the country’s Supreme Court ruled that a class-action suit brought against Mastercard Inc. for excessive interchange fees can proceed. But they still face a major challenge proving that consumers were materially harmed by …

Overall U.S. credit card use dipped 2% for the week ending Nov. 29 compared with the week ending Dec. 1, 2019, according to the Tracking Transaction Trends report from PSCU, a credit union service organization. Meanwhile, debit card use increased 4.9% for the same period. Regionally, the largest credit card drop was …

Most Americans will be glad to see the last of 2020 as they ring in 2021 in a few weeks, and that group will include private investors. In a year in which the coronavirus ran rampant, damaging many businesses and shuttering others, tech investors pegged significantly fewer privately held payments …

Finally! No doubt, merchants throughout the country are applauding the Justice Department’s suit against Visa to stop its planned acquisition of Plaid, a potential competitor. For far too long, we’ve witnessed the growth of Visa’s dominance of the debit card business, which has come at a huge cost to America’s …

As firms look for ways to speed up and secure simultaneous payments to multiple workers or contractors, cryptocurrency has entered the picture. BitPay Inc., an Atlanta-based processor that offers crypto e-wallets, on Thursday said it has added a mass-payout service that will let companies pay gig workers, contractors, and other …

PayPal Holdings Inc.’s top executives late Monday laid out what chief executive Dan Schulman called “a fundamental overhaul” of the company’s PayPal and Venmo apps that will include a new cryptocurrency feature as well as bill payment and QR code capability on top of near-field communication technology and PayPal’s Pay …

As the economy registers a tentative recovery from the deep recession caused by Covid-19, payments networks are doing likewise. This is probably no more true than with American Express Co., whose concentration in the travel-and-entertainment market caused the company’s financials to nosedive earlier this year as the pandemic grounded airlines, …

Visa Inc. on Wednesday announced the rollout in 15 geographic markets of Visa Tap to Phone, which allows consumers to initiate a transaction simply by tapping a contactless card to a merchant’s NFC-enabled mobile device.  Tap to Phone is now live in numerous countries throughout Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia …

PayPal Holdings Inc. announced a service that allows account holders to buy, hold, and sell cryptocurrency directly from their account. The company also said it will make cryptocurrency available as a funding source for purchases at the 26 million merchants worldwide that accept PayPal.Payments provider FIS Inc. said it added pharmacy chain Walgreens …

Last conducted in 2016, the latest Third-Party Processing Pricing Benchmark Study from The Strawhecker Group indicates that debit and credit card transaction pricing appears to have leveled off.  The average value of an IP-connected front-end authorization and capture action in 2020 is $0.016 for jumbo wholesale acquirers, or those with …

Much has been written about the need for merchants to adopt various forms of contactless payments to suit jittery customers and cashiers in the midst of Covid-19, but often the conversion to touch-free transactions is easier said than done. In response, Square Inc. late Thursday unveiled an application programming interface …