Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Merchant cash advances for online retailers suddenly are coming into vogue with the entry of PayPal Inc. into the market. PayPal recently disclosed that it plans to test in its home country a cash-advance program similar to one it has tested in the United Kingdom. Finance companies and merchant …
Read More »Bitcoin’s Price Doubles and a Processor Prospers, but Is the Digital Currency Now Legitimate?
Digital currency Bitcoin is making strides in its campaign to be viewed as a legitimate alternative to traditional payment methods. A major Bitcoin processor—Atlanta-based BitPay Inc.—yesterday announced it had processed more than $5.2 million in Bitcoin transactions for its e-commerce merchants during March. And earlier in the week, the …
Read More »How Merchants Can Protect Card Data in the Mobile-Payments ‘Dead Zone’
Can merchants make payment applications that run on smart phones secure? Yes, but only after they take some steps they might find to be difficult, according to an expert steeped in the intricacies of the Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI). “Smart phones were not built for taking payments, …
Read More »Fed Survey Confirms Mobile-Payments Users Remain Rare, but Data Show Growth Potential
Great news for mobile payments: the Federal Reserve says the percentage of consumers using a smart phone to make a purchase at the point of sale grew nearly threefold last year. Not-so-great news: don’t rely on that figure, because it’s too small to be statistically significant. Those and other …
Read More »Banks’ Bill-Pay Sites Poised To Grow as Consumers Make More Online and Mobile Payments
Consumers are paying fewer bills than they were in 2009, but paying more of them online and through mobile devices. Between 2009 and 2011 total consumer bill payments fell from 16.6 billion to 16.1 billion, according to a report released this week by Boston-based Aite Group LLC. The decline …
Read More »AmEx Insures Its Bluebird Prepaid Card, but Enhancements May Not Ensure Success
American Express Co.’s announcement that its low-fee Bluebird prepaid card account will be eligible for insurance from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and offer checking account features could be a move to win more business from its upscale core cardholder base as well as provide more services to Bluebird …
Read More »Today’s Data-Security Technology Just Doesn’t Cut It, Experts Tell E-Commerce Execs
Like metastatic cancer, the cyberattacks originating from ordinary hackers all the way up to national governments seem to be getting worse by the day, according to security experts who spoke Wednesday to a conference of e-commerce executives. Case in point: last week, citizens of South Korea couldn’t use banks …
Read More »Why ATM Skimming Fraud Jumped Ahead of Point-of-Sale Skimming in 2012
Credit and debit card skimming at automated teller machines outstripped card skimming at the point of sale in 2012, according to a new fraud report from FICO Labs, a San Jose, Calif.-based predictive-analytics and decision-management software unit of Fair Isaac Corp. Twenty states also saw an increase in credit …
Read More »MasterCard’s Wallet Fee: A Tool of Oppression, or One To Level the Acquiring Playing Field?
Is MasterCard Inc.’s coming digital-wallet fee for online-payments providers such as PayPal Inc. a fair charge for systems that rely on the bank card networks to move their transactions, or a way for the established card networks to squeeze upstarts? That’s the gist of the debate that’s swept across the …
Read More »Blackhawk Network Gives a Sneak Peak Into Its Inner Workings Ahead of Its IPO
International expansion and broader distribution in the United States are among the major initiatives on tap for gift card and prepaid card seller and program manager Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. to grow its business, according a filing Blackhawk made this week in preparation for its planned initial public offering. Some …
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