News

May, 2017

• 17 May

  Do Business Owners Realize That You Are The One to Ask?

    Business owners today can’t avoid hearing the industry’s new buzz words:  Big data, omnichannel marketing, data analytics, mobile payments and loyalty, to name a few.  Merchants know they need them, but many of these important prospects do not know how to find the best solutions, all in one place, …
• 16 May

  COMMENTARY: Build a Better Shopping Experience With Digital Layers

  Remember the Pokémon GO craze? The game was a megahit because it cleverly combined the physical and digital worlds. It added an augmented contextual layer so players could use smart-phone map and camera functions to interact with characters, other players, and game elements. What if a similar augmentation toolkit were available …
• 16 May

  Masterpass Books Expedia and other Digital Transactions News briefs

  • Mobile-payments provider LevelUp said it has closed a $50 million funding round with participation by existing investor JPMorgan Chase & Co. as well as US Boston and CentroCredit Bank. LevelUp, which says its user count is nearly 1 million, is the subject of a lawsuit by competitor CardFree Inc. alleging LevelUp fraudulently …
• 16 May

  MoneyGram Shareholders Give a Thumbs-Up to Ant Financial’s Buyout Offer

  

  Shareholders of MoneyGram International Inc. voted overwhelmingly in favor of Ant Financial Services Group’s planned $1.2 billion acquisition of their company, Dallas-based MoneyGram announced Tuesday. A preliminary tally shows 97% of the shares voted were in favor of the deal and represented more than 82% of all outstanding shares, MoneyGram …
• 15 May

  Why Alipay Is So Intent on ‘Ubiquity’ in North American Merchant Acceptance

  

  When it comes to establishing merchant acceptance in North America, Alipay’s ambitions go well beyond niche markets. In fact, “When we’re looking at partners, we’re looking for ubiquity,” Souheil Badran, president of Alipay North America, tells Digital Transactions News in a wide-ranging interview. Those partners so far include First Data …
• 15 May

  ISO Acquisition Boosts Merchant Acquirer JetPay’s Revenues

  

  Thanks in part to its acquisition of a Florida independent sales organization nearly a year ago, merchant acquirer JetPay Corp. on Monday reported that its first-quarter revenues increased 63% to $18.9 million from $11.6 million in the year-ago period. JetPay’s Payment Services segment, its biggest unit, saw revenues jump by …
• 15 May

  The Pays Users To Surpass 150 Million by the End of 2017, Predicts a Juniper Report

  

  The number of consumers using at least one of the major third-party mobile-payment services—Apple Pay, Android Pay, or Samsung Pay—will top 150 million globally by the of 2017, says Juniper Research, a U.K.-based firm, in its “Is OEM-Pay the Future of Contactless” report. Some 50 million of them will begin …
• 15 May

  EVO Makes Another Acquisition and other Digital Transactions News briefs

  • EVO Payments International announced it purchased the remaining ownership interest in Zenith Merchant Services, a Montreal-based payments provider. Terms were not disclosed. • Payments processor Computer Services Inc. has integrated data from Dow Jones Risk & Compliance for sanctions screening to help clients control the risk of doing business with politically …
• 15 May

  CardFree Charges That Rival LevelUp Fraudulently Accessed Its Order-Ahead Service

  

  It could be taken as a sign of how competitive the order-ahead-and-pay feature has become in the rapidly developing market for mobile payments. In a lawsuit filed in federal court on May 2, CardFree Inc. has accused rival mobile-payments developer Scvngr Inc. of fraudulently accessing CardFree’s technology to process orders …
• 12 May

  For Payments Players, Not Much Cause for Optimism in the Age of Trump, Analysts Warn

  

  While much of the corporate world has high hopes for a business-friendly bent from the Trump Administration, two policy analysts on Wednesday poured cold water on some of the payments industry’s fondest hopes for regulatory relief. One such hope, to scrap a 1,689-page rule regulating prepaid cards, was sinking fast …