Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
PayPal Inc.’s ambitious plan to achieve what its parent company’s chief executive calls “ubiquity” in in-store acceptance took a key step forward this week when news emerged that Mercury Payment Systems has become the first independent sales organization to market PayPal’s mobile wallet to small brick-and-mortar merchants. Durango, Colo.-based Mercury, …
Read More »Amazon Payments ‘Lite’ Debuts To Appeal to Online Sellers Looking for Easier Integration
Looking to attract more small businesses that just want to process online payments, e-commerce kingpin Amazon.com Inc. is rolling out a new, streamlined version of its 6-year-old Amazon Payments service. The new platform, which includes a simplified application programming interface, front-end widgets, and a testing “sandbox,” minimizes integration time by …
Read More »Groupon Crashes Traditional ISO Business with a Move into POS Terminals
The acquiring business, already fraught with rivalry, became even more competitive on Wednesday with an announcement from daily-deals giant Groupon Inc. that it will supply traditional point of sale terminals to merchants as part of a new initiative under its payments division. The Chicago-based company, which last year jumped into …
Read More »Durbin Judge May Allow Merchant Reimbursement; More Retailers Sue over Interchange
A judge in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday gave the Federal Reserve Board a week to indicate its position about a possible interim rule for implementing the Durbin Amendment, the part of 2010’s Dodd-Frank Act that regulates debit cards, after ruling late last month that the Fed’s current regulations do not …
Read More »Chase Paymentech Pursues Mobile Payments And More with New Service for Small Businesses
By Jim Daly The big merchant acquirer Chase Paymentech Solutions LLC on Tuesday announced a mobile-payments service that includes a reader that plugs into smart phones as part of a broader new service for small businesses called Chase Checkout. After testing the service in five states, Dallas-based Chase Paymentech quietly …
Read More »Isis Readies Its National Mobile-Payments Rollout with Two Big Issuers on Board
The Isis smart-phone-based payments machine is finally getting in gear, observers say, in the wake of several recent developments involving the service that is jointly owned by three big mobile-telecommunications carriers. Giant card issuer JPMorgan Chase & Co. on Monday said that several of its cards will support the Isis …
Read More »As It Gains Greater Utility, Virtual Currency No Longer Just Plays Games
By Jim Daly The U.S. virtual-currency market grew 52% in 2012 and this year it could more than double to $10.9 billion in purchases, according to a new report from Javelin Strategy & Research. What’s more, virtual currency is moving beyond its online-game moorings and into more real-world settings, though …
Read More »VeriFone Brings Point to the U.S. as Part of a New, Managed-Payments Offering
More than 18 months after acquiring Point, a Sweden-based provider of payment gateway solutions to merchants, point-of-sale terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc. announced Monday that it will roll out the service to U.S. merchants beginning this fall. VeriFone intends to offer Point as a managed service through independent sales organizations …
Read More »Interlink Starts Growing Again And Visa Prospers Despite Legal And Regulatory Uncertainties
Visa Inc.’s Interlink PIN-debit network is recovering after a devastating year following implementation in April 2012 of the transaction-routing requirements in the Dodd-Frank Act’s Durbin Amendment. Visa reported Wednesday that Interlink transaction volume rose 25% in its third quarter of fiscal 2013 ended June 30, a sharp turnaround from the …
Read More »Allpoint Eyes More Surcharge-Free ATM Volume Through a New Pact with Discover
Discover Financial Services has been in the spotlight over the past year because of its high-profile effort with PayPal Inc. to bring the online-payments leader’s service to millions of physical merchants. But that’s just one iron Riverwoods, Ill.-based Discover has in the fire. On Monday, the Allpoint surcharge-free ATM network …
Read More »