Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Credit card fraud in the United States is at epidemic levels. Last year, the U.S. accounted for more fraud than the rest of the world combined. And the fraud rates are accelerating. EMV technology, which has shown to greatly reduce in-store fraud in Europe, is finally being rolled out in the …
Read More »Eye on EMV: Unprepared Merchants in for a ‘Big Surprise;’ U.S. Conversion Lifts Ingenico
By Jim Daly Some merchant categories such as restaurants are moving slowly into EMV chip card acceptance ahead of the looming Oct. 1 liability shift because they experience little of the fraud EMV cards are intended to prevent, while others are going to find losses “winging back at them,” executives …
Read More »Eye on Earnings: MasterCard Touts ‘Agnostic’ Tech Approach; Vantiv Revenue Climbs
By John Stewart and Jim Daly With products like its MasterPass digital wallet, MasterCard Inc. has stepped up its efforts to stake a claim in the emerging market for digital payments. But the company is loath to commit itself too soon to any particular technology, according to the card network’s …
Read More »Merchants Have New Ammo To Blow up Interchange Settlement—But Is It Enough?
By Jim Daly Citing what they say were improper communications between two lawyers on opposing sides of a $5.7 billion settlement between merchants and Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc., attorneys for a group of about 30 merchants gave notice to the networks Tuesday that they want to have the settlement …
Read More »COMMENTARY: Three Reasons Why Digital Wallets Are the Future of Payments
By Nicole Chan When Apple Pay first entered the digital-wallet scene, consumer interest in the technology increased. Now the question is, will digital-wallet payments become universal? The short answer is yes. The three reasons below expand on why. Reason #1: The technology exists. Rarely has the developed world made a …
Read More »Stripe’s Value Pegged at $5 Billion as Visa, AmEx Invest in the Online Payments Startup
Payments behemoth Visa Inc. has poured some cash into Stripe, an independent online-payments startup, which will be used to aid Stripe’s international expansion. The specific Visa investment was not disclosed. But adding in investments from Sequoia Capital and American Express Co. that were made alongside the one from Visa, Stripe …
Read More »COMMENTARY: Tokenization, Misinformation, and the Benefits of Host Card Emulation
Tokenization is not a new concept. Yet, while the process has improved card security across a variety of industries, there still exists myriad misinformation about why it’s important and how to best implement it. I’m going to argue that an approach called host card emulation (HCE) is the safest and …
Read More »Visa Posts 25% Profit Increase as U.S. Credit and Debit Volumes Climb
A tepid world economy didn’t stop Visa Inc. from posting an 8% increase in global transaction volume and a 25% jump in net income for the quarter ended June 30. The leading payment card network on Thursday reported operating revenues of $3.52 billion for the third quarter of fiscal 2015, …
Read More »Eye On Earnings: AmEx’s Earnings Slip But OptBlue Grows; Discover’s Pulse Volume Dips
By Jim Daly and Kevin Woodward American Express Co. saw total revenues and profits decline by 4% in the second quarter, but its OptBlue program has added 700,000 small merchants this year. Meanwhile, Discover Financial Services reported late Wednesday that its Pulse volume fell after losing a large issuer. New …
Read More »Investors Give a Thumbs Up to the Newly Independent PayPal
After a 13-year absence, online-payments provider PayPal Holdings Inc. debuted Monday morning on the Nasdaq Stock Market as an independent company following its spin-off Friday from parent eBay Inc. Investors looking for growth opportunities in payments liked what they saw, pushing PayPal’s price up approximately 6% and valuing the company …
Read More »