Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
By Jim Daly Ask owners of Apple Inc.’s new Apple Watch what they like about their high-tech wearable, and they put notifications and Apple’s health-and-fitness monitoring app at the top of the list. Coming in at No. 7 of their likes is the Apple Pay mobile-payments service, according to new …
Read More »As Holiday Season Nears, System Hiccups Trip Up Virtual Gift Card Offerings
By John Stewart When Nikki Baird and Steve Rowen evaluated retailers’ digital gift cards this year, the thing that surprised them the most was how disjointed the shopper experience is. Card sales that worked just fine at a merchant’s desktop site just didn’t translate well to a mobile device, for …
Read More »With Its Relay API, Stripe Enlists in Effort to Drive up Conversion Rates in M-Commerce
By John Stewart With conversion rates dismally low in mobile commerce, technology players have been working to streamline transactions with tools that let shoppers buy with as few clicks as possible and while staying within an app. Late Monday, online processor Stripe Inc. joined that effort with Relay, an application …
Read More »With Macy’s on Board, PayPal’s Brick-And-Mortar POS Initiative Catches a Tailwind
Leading online payments provider PayPal Holdings Inc. disclosed late Tuesday that the big department-store chain Macy’s Inc. would accept PayPal not only on its Web sites and on mobile devices but also in its stores. The announcement breathes new life into PayPal’s years-long effort to come to the physical point …
Read More »Once a Power in M-Payments, Carriers Now Play a Lesser Role As New Wallets Emerge
By John Stewart With Google Inc.’s Sept. 10 launch of Android Pay, competition in the mobile-payments market heated up to an even higher temperature. But in all the talk about tech companies, handset makers, and banks ushering in services like Android Pay, Apple Pay, and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.’s Samsung …
Read More »As the Liability Shift Rapidly Approaches, Free Can Be a Smart EMV Terminal Motivator
With fewer than 300,000 merchant locations ready for EMV chip card transactions—according to Visa Inc.—efforts to get merchants to upgrade to the more fraud-resistant point-of-sale terminals take on greater importance. For example, iPad-based POS system maker ShopKeep.com Inc. last week began offering merchants a free contactless reader that also accepts …
Read More »Android Pay Arrives, Ready To Displace Old Google Wallet Memories
Google Inc.’s latest foray into mobile payments made its way to the public Thursday when the technology giant announced the release of Android Pay. Available only on smart phones and tablets enabled for near-field communication (NFC) and using the KitKat4 or later operating system, Android Pay enables consumers to load …
Read More »AmEx’s Deal With Sam’s Club Will Only Partially Fill the Costco Hole
American Express Co. soon will be accepted at Sam’s Club, the membership-club division of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. The new deal will open more than 650 warehouse stores with thousands of big-spending customers to AmEx, but it still will fall short of filling the big hole that the warehouse-club sector’s biggest …
Read More »Better Late Than Never: Apple Pay Arrives Next Week for Discover Cardholders
By Kevin Woodward Cardholders yearning to load their Discover Financial Services cards into Apple Pay have less than a week to wait. Discover announced Wednesday that its cards will work with Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay beginning Sept. 16, the same day Apple releases an updated version of its mobile operating …
Read More »Marketing Strategies Can Help Lower Merchant-Acquisition Costs for ISOs
How much does it cost to acquire a merchant? On average, $693. That’s the word from Adil Consulting, an Omaha, Neb.-based firm specializing in merchant acquiring. That figure, as an average, is highly influenced by a number of variables, Adil Moussa, principal, tells Digital Transactions News. Banks, for example, have …
Read More »