By linking directly to UnionPay’s SecurePlus two-factor authentication application, digital-commerce platform provider Merchant e-Solutions Inc. expects to significantly reduce decline rates for UnionPay debit card transactions in the United States.  Decline rates are an especially nettlesome issue for UnionPay debit card holders, who account for about 60% of UnionPay’s 9 …

Building on its strategy to support cryptocurrency, PayPal Holdings Inc. announced Monday that it has agreed to acquire Curv Inc., a provider of cloud-based infrastructure for digital-asset security, for an undisclosed sum. Once the acquisition is completed later this year, Tel Aviv, Israel-based Curv will become part of a PayPal …

Cash purchases fell to historic lows in 2020 as consumers shifted their payment preferences to contactless technologies such as mobile wallets, according to the 2021 Global Payments Report by Worldpay from FIS Inc. Cash transactions represented just 20.5% of global point-of-sale volume in 2020, down from 30.2% 2019, according to …

Thanks to the proliferation of such financial-service technologies as mobile wallets and peer-to-peer and e-cash payments, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, financial-technology providers are closing the gap on unbanked and underbanked consumers’ access to financial services, according to a report from the Electronic Transactions Association. One example cited in the …

Payments provider The OLB Group Inc. announced Tuesday that its SecurePay payment gateway will support payment acceptance through social-media applications without requiring consumers to leave the app. To enable payments through such apps as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, TikTok and Skype, OLB is leveraging the application-programming interfaces for social-media platforms to …

In an effort to move automated clearing house transactions closer to real-time, E-Complish, a New York City-based payment processor, announced Monday it has teamed with data network Plaid Inc., to validate a bank account, and the funds in it, for ACH transactions. The service makes it possible for E-Complish customers …

The growing number of attacks targeting third-party developers’ payment applications, as well as the third-party applications into which the payments capabilities are integrated, is the impetus behind the PCI Security Standards Council’s decision to update the PCI Secure Software Lifecycle standard. Introduced this month, PCI Secure SLC Standard v1.1 is …

Payment platform provider NMI’s acquisition of gateway provider USAePay for an undisclosed sum is based on the rationale that it better positions NMI to meet merchants’ need for connected, multichannel payment technology, which has become especially valuable in the face of the pandemic. It also bolsters NMI’s economies of scale. …

In a nod to merchants’ need for more favorable point-of-sale pricing as a way to counterbalance the decline in business many have incurred as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, cloud-based POS-services provider Sky Systemz has introduced the Sky Terminal. Priced at $749, Sky Systemz’s contactless point-of-sale terminal features a …

While the Covid-19 pandemic has deepened consumers’ reliance on contactless payments, as well as digital and mobile banking, a generation gap exists when it comes adoption of those technologies, separate reports from Oxygen, a San Francisco-based financial-platform provider, and digital consulting firm Mobiquity, have found. Of the more than 1,000 …