Competitive Strategies

There has been a “noticeable increase” in fraud on credits and debits on the automated clearing house network, according to the latest “Payments Fraud and Control Survey Report” from the Association for Financial Professionals. Some 33% of responding organizations reported ACH debit fraud in 2018, up from 28% in 2017, …

PayPal Holdings Inc. has posted some important policy changes set to take effect soon, including one that will stop refunding sellers for the commission part of the fee they pay on sales when buyers cancel. Sellers on forums like Reddit have been reacting for at least the last five days …

i3 Verticals Inc. completed its $24 million acquisition of Northeast Texas Data LLC and Graves Humphries Stahl LLC, collectively known as Net Data, which provides software services, including payment acceptance, to municipalities and local government agencies primarily in Texas. Millersville University adopted the ACI student payment portal from ACI Worldwide …

A recent Forbes article attempted to refute many of the conclusions of a prior Wall Street Journal article that had illustrated how the card schemes (Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc.) have dramatically increased their fees in recent years. In response, the Forbes article challenged the Journal article by completely changing …

A First Data Corp. shareholder filed a proposed class-action lawsuit Wednesday challenging the planned acquisition of the payment processor by Fiserv Inc. The $22 billion all-stock merger benefits First Data’s controlling shareholder, the investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., “to the detriment of the company’s noninsider stockholders,” says the …

Nxt-ID Inc. is getting closer to spinning off its Fit Pay Inc. unit, which markets the contactless-payment technology behind Garmin Pay and Swatch Pay and also this week began shipping a contactless device to allow consumers to spend their Bitcoin holdings at stores. The spin-off, first announced in September, will …

Cardtronics plc completed the integration of FIS Cardless Cash into 11,000 ATMs and expects to add 8,000 machines over the next several months. Cardtronics and Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) announced the integration in 2017. Online lending platform OnDeck said it will begin funding small-business clients with same-day credits …

Physical gift cards may want to look over their shoulders, so to speak. Digital gift cards are gaining ground, especially among younger consumers, finds new research from Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc., a Pleasanton, Calif.-based gift card specialist. Chief among the results is that 41% of Generation Z consumers, generally those …

Checkbook, a provider of digital-check technology, introduced Instant Pay, a service that lets businesses push funds into consumer and corporate bank accounts using Visa Direct, Visa Inc.’s push-payments network. Checkbook’s founder is PJ Gupta, former chief network architect at Visa. First American Payment Systems LP said it now offers Idealpos’s …

FitPay Inc. has started shipping its contactless, coin-shaped Flip device, which allows users to spend Bitcoin as U.S. dollars at stores. The company said on Wednesday it plans to “ramp up” production of Flip though the first half of the year. The news comes after Fit Pay announced in January …