Crafting a mobile-payments strategy can be a daunting task. The technology is evolving rapidly, and so are consumer expectations. Rather than starting with capabilities, a successful mobile strategy begins with an understanding of how people engage with their finances as part of their daily lives. Evaluating how consumers use mobile …
Read More »SpotOn Transact Initiates Crypto Acceptance and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 12/3/18
FreedomPay announced Nando’s, an international fast-casual restaurant chain, will use FreedomPay’s point-to-point encryption payments platform in its Oracle Micros Simphony POS system installations. Payments provider SpotOn Transact LLC agreed to offer acceptance of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to merchants via a partnership with Vaultbank, a blockchain-technology firm. Kevin Jones, founder …
Read More »Gearfire Payments Targets Shooting-Sports Industry and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 11/30/18
Independent sales organization Gearfire Payments announced new plans to focus on reducing payment costs for the shooting-sports industry. Atom Tickets, a mobile-ticketing service for the movie industry, said it integrated SMG Access, a loyalty program from Studio Movie Grill, an operator of movie theaters featuring in-theater dining. Target Corp. may …
Read More »Can Amazon Pay Win in Stores? It May Depend on Processing Costs And the Right Incentives
Amazon.com Inc.’s strategy to push its Amazon Pay wallet into physical stores could depend crucially on its ability to cut payment-processing costs and generate marketing advantages for merchants, including Groupon-like incentives, experts tell Digital Transactions News. The new strategy has been in the works at least since 2017 but reached …
Read More »Glance Technologies Tests At-Table Payment And Launches a Bitcoin Feature
Waiting for a server to bring a paper bill to a table so the payment can be made might not happen at some restaurants if tests by Glance Technologies of its Real-Time Bill feature prove successful. Announced Wednesday, the feature, which is in testing at undisclosed merchants, enables users to …
Read More »First American’s New Hire and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 11/29/18
A consumer bill-pay survey revealed that 46% of consumers routinely pay after the due date or never pay at all. Of these, 72% are “very” or “extremely likely” to pay on time if they could pay with a credit or debit card, while 69% would pay on time if they …
Read More »The Black Friday-Cyber Monday Shopping Lesson? Pay Attention to the Checkout
Add e-commerce platform Shopify Inc. to the roster of entities that experienced record sales during the recent holiday-shopping weekend, reporting $1.5 billion in volume from Friday through Monday. Two-thirds of that came from mobile transactions. Mobile commerce took the top spot on Cyber Monday, the Monday following Thanksgiving, according to …
Read More »Cardfree Opens Order-Ahead API to Developers and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 11/28/18
First Data Corp. released its Holiday Insights dashboard, which shows real-time U.S. holiday spending trends, such as total spend percentage increase, today’s most active categories with average ticket and total transactions, and regional payment volume. To date, it indicates retail spending from Thanksgiving through Black Friday increased 6.4% year-over-year. Cardfree Inc., …
Read More »British Competition Regulators Probe PayPal’s Takeover of iZettle
The United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority announced Monday that its initial investigation has found that PayPal Holdings Inc.’s September acquisition of Swedish processor iZettle AB could reduce competition or raise prices in the payments market. But whether the antitrust regulator will unwind the deal is far from certain. “While …
Read More »Mobile Commerce Flourished on Black Friday At the Expense of Desktop Activity
More consumers took to their smart phones this past Friday, known as Black Friday, at the expense of shopping online with a desktop computer, finds Akamai Technologies, a Web-services company. Consumers using mobile devices accounted for 57.6% of online shopping on Nov. 23, compared with 35.9% for those using desktop …
Read More »