A big office lease in downtown Oakland, Calif., suggests merchant processor Square Inc. is about to embark on a big expansion. Square on Thursday signed a lease for an entire 356,000-square-foot building that once was a Sears department store and after that was briefly owned by the ride-sharing firm Uber. …
Read More »USAT Lands Contactless Vending Contract and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 12/21/18
Pepsi-Cola of the Hudson Valley reached an agreement with USA Technologies Inc. to install contactless-payment capability on 300 vending machines and to upgrade payment devices on another 1,000 machines already linked to USAT’s ePort Connect Service. Merchant processor Square Inc. agreed to lease an entire 356,000-square-foot building in Oakland, Calif., where …
Read More »COMMENTARY: For Merchants, Much Has Been Accomplished, Much Is Yet To Be Done
Merchants have come a long way since the inception of the Merchant Advisory Group, but far more needs to be done to restore some semblance of balance in payments. Upon reflection, it is remarkable that traditional merchants had no formal means to get together to discuss payments until the MAG …
Read More »Synchrony Financial Extends Qurate Private-Label Card Deal and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 12/20/18
Mobile-commerce platform PredictSpring said it developed a mobile-shopping app and store-associate app that provides a buy-online, pickup-in-store function for BevMo!, a specialty-beverage retailer. Synchrony Financial announced it will provide private-label credit card services to Qurate Retail Group, parent company of HSN, beginning in 2019. Synchrony also extended existing deals with …
Read More »Square Resumes Its Pursuit of a Bank Charter
After a lull of more than five months, merchant processor Square Inc. is resuming its attempt to obtain a bank charter. A spokesperson for San Francisco-based Square confirmed Wednesday morning that the company would refile its application the same day. Square in September 2017 filed for an industrial-bank charter from …
Read More »FIS in Shell Loyalty Deal and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 12/19/18
E-commerce technology provider 3dcart said its merchants can now offer Bread, an online financing service for consumer purchases, to their shoppers. Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) said consumers can redeem rewards points instantly at the pump at approximately 13,400 Shell stations nationwide through a new agreement between FIS and …
Read More »Extend Joins Visa Ready Program and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 12/18/18
Atom Tickets released a skill for Amazon Alexa, the retailer’s voice-assistant technology. Users can learn what movies are playing nearby and buy tickets using voice commands. The skill is integrated with Amazon Pay. Extend, a digital distribution platform for credit cards, registered with the Visa Ready program for business solutions, …
Read More »Eye on Security: Oversight of Payment Software To Change Under PCI Council Plan; EMVCo Updates 3-D Secure
Oversight of payment-processing software will change under detailed plans announced by the PCI Security Standards Council. In related news, the EMVCo standards body announced an update to its 3-D Secure standard for protecting card-not-present transactions. In a Friday blog post, the PCI Council said its pending PCI Secure Software Standard …
Read More »PayJunction’s Integration with RetailOps and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 12/17/18
Technology provider Nxt-ID Inc. said its planned spinoff of its payment assets into an independent, publicly traded company has been delayed until the first quarter of 2019 owing to the company’s inability to come to terms with its primary lender, which holds security interests in the assets targeted for the …
Read More »COMMENTARY: How Virtual Card Acceptance Drives Innovation in Small-Business Payments
In 2018, the acceptance of virtual cards, also known as v-cards, by small-to-midsize businesses (SMBs) increased significantly as suppliers embraced the improved security and convenience of this digital payment method over paper checks. Still, making the leap to fully automated payments remained a challenge for most within this market segment. …
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