North America’s largest payments company on Thursday said it expects to receive a $1 billion bonus from the federal tax-reform bill passed into law in December. In contrast with its rival Mastercard Inc., which reported earlier in the day it recorded an $873 million charge in the fourth quarter related …
Read More »Regulatory Efforts May Be Quiet at the Federal Level, But Not So In States And the Courts
Federal regulatory initiatives targeting the payments industry may have abated, but a variety of others at the state level and in the court system could require reactions from payments providers. That’s the word from Scott Talbott, senior vice president of government affairs, who spoke Wednesday at the annual Northeast Acquirers …
Read More »Square Expands Bitcoin Service and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 2-1-18
PayPal Holdings Inc.’s stock was trading down about 7.5% as of mid-morning Thursday, hours after an announcement from eBay Inc. that the big marketplace will shift transaction processing from long-time provider PayPal to Netherlands-based processor Adyen. EBay’s business accounts for about 13% of PayPal’s volume, a share PayPal said Thursday …
Read More »For PayPal, a New Deal Extends Its Link to eBay Even As It Seeks Out Other Marketplaces
PayPal Holdings Inc. on Wednesday said it has reached an agreement with its former owner, eBay Inc., that calls for PayPal to act as a checkout method on eBay for three years beyond the end of the five-year pact that separated eBay and PayPal in 2015. In that three-year period, …
Read More »Bank-Owned Zelle Puts Venmo’s Millennial Enthusiasts Squarely in Its Cross-Hairs
Payments observers who think Venmo and Square Cash have locked up the Millennial crowd for peer-to-peer payments may have to reconsider. With the new advertising blitz it announced Monday, the bank-owned Zelle service is making it plain it plans to steal its share of this huge consumer market. “The advertising …
Read More »Sage Payment Solutions Rebrands As Paya And Aims at Higher Visibility As a Payments Company
Seven months after paying $260 million for Sage Payment Solutions, the U.S. merchant-services arm of Sage Group plc, investment firm GTCR LLC is giving it a new name—Paya—and a refreshed strategy to add more merchants to its portfolio. Announced Tuesday, the Paya name for the Reston, Va.-based payments provider signifies a …
Read More »Facing Popular P2P Rivals, Bank-Owned Zelle Posts Healthy Growth And Revs up Ads
In the hotly contested person-to-person payment business, financial institutions have felt left behind by technology impresarios like PayPal Holdings Inc. and Square Inc. that have entered the market over the past few years with slick P2P apps. But on Monday, the banks’ Zelle network released fresh numbers indicating healthy growth …
Read More »Bitcoin Transaction Fees Ease off Sharply, But How Long Will the Trend Last?
Long confirmation times and hefty transaction fees have pushed some Bitcoin backers to back away from the digital currency in recent weeks, but now there are signs that one of those problems is easing significantly while the other is growing much worse. The median transaction fee stood at $5.69 as …
Read More »Your Opinion Counts
What impact might the PCI Security Standards Council’s recently released spec enabling PIN on glass transactions with commercially available, off-the-shelf devices have on mobile point-of-sale equipment sales? http://ow.ly/k2h030i1yQs #payments #survey
Read More »Starbucks Brews New Cards and Mulls Blockchain Technology
Investors gave Starbucks Corp. the cold shoulder Friday morning on news that despite a record $6.1 billion in quarterly revenues, growth is slowing in the United States. But the coffee giant’s payments business has several initiatives brewing, executives reported late Thursday. A leader in closed-loop prepaid cards and mobile payments …
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