Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Mobile payments in New York City soon could get access to a large amount of raw material for transactions if a proposal by the city’s Department of Finance becomes reality. The DoF recently issued a request for information (RFI) from vendors about developing a mobile-payments system for paying parking violations. …
Read More »Payments Exec Tom Wimsett in Gateway Deal With Private-Equity Firm
Former National Processing Co. chief executive Tom Wimsett, now head of consulting firm Wimsett & Co. LLC, has teamed up with private-equity firm Thompson Street Capital Partners to buy EchoSat Communication, a payment-gateway company. EchoSat, based in Lexington, Ky., targets petroleum marketers and convenience stores. According to EchoSat’s Web …
Read More »Short MoneyCard Contract Extension With Wal-Mart Casts a Shadow Over Green Dot
Green Dot Corp.’s stock fell 8% Tuesday morning after the prepaid card services provider reported Monday that it had extended its agreement with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to issue and manage the Walmart MoneyCard only until Dec. 31, 2015. In the view of investors, the short extension of a five-year agreement …
Read More »ComScore: Online Spending by PC up 15% Since Nov. 1, With $5 Billion Yet to Come for ‘14
Just going by the headlines, you’d think mobile is the prime mover in the payments business. But desktop PCs still dominate online sales, and for the holiday-shopping season they’ve been ringing like cash registers. Since the official start of the season on Nov. 1, consumers using PCs have registered $48.3 …
Read More »Bitcoin Enjoys Steady Growth, But Experts Ask Where the Case Is for Consumer Use
Since 2012, investors have poured $407 million into Bitcoin startups, with three-quarters of that sum flowing into the cryptocurrency just this year, according to figures compiled by CoinDesk, a Bitcoin newsletter. But now at least one expert is expressing doubts that these investors will see much of a return—if any—on …
Read More »MasterCard Expands Its Outreach to Software Developers With a Global ‘Hackathon’
MasterCard Inc. opened up its payment network to third-party software developers in 2012 and since then has participated in a number of regional “hackathons” in which developers create applications that link to MasterCard network services. Now MasterCard is expanding its footprint in the developer space by sponsoring what it calls …
Read More »CorFire Acquisition Bolsters Mozido’s M-Commerce Presence at Home and Abroad
Mobile-payments platform developer Mozido Inc. expanded its footprint in the budding industry sector with its announcement Thursday that it acquired a majority interest in CorFire, a U.S. m-commerce subsidiary of South Korea-based information-technology provider SK C&C. Mozido already provides the MoTeaf white-label payments platform as well as various person-to-person, bill-payment, …
Read More »With Holiday Gift Card Sales Wilting, Issuers Will Have to Push Harder, Add Digital
The earliest known example of a closed-loop gift card was offered during the Christmas holiday season in 1916 by Hampton’s Quality Store in Eugene, Ore. The store advertised a “Christmas Glove Gift Card” that could be given to a lady, allowing her to redeem it for the gloves she wanted. …
Read More »Digital River Re-Ups With Microsoft, Removing a Cloud Over Its Planned Buy-Out
Investors in Digital River Inc.’s stock reacted with exultation Wednesday morning when the gateway and e-commerce services provider disclosed that Microsoft Corp., its biggest customer, had renewed an agreement under which Digital River hosts the Microsoft Store online site. Not only has Digital River retained a client that accounts for …
Read More »NCR Silver Adds LevelUp as a Payment And Marketing Option
NCR Corp. has added mobile payment and marketing provider LevelUp as an option for merchants using NCR Silver, NCR’s tablet-based point-of-sale system, NCR announced this week. Duluth, Ga.-based NCR says consumers can pay with LevelUp once merchants activate it as a payment option in NCR Silver. NCR Silver is a …
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