Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Pressure from the down economy is pushing more online merchants to seek out ways of selling to overseas customers, creating an opportunity for startups like Adyen Inc., a Netherlands-based online payments gateway that announced this week it has started operations in the U.S. Gateways funnel payments for online merchants to …
Read More »Eye on Mobile: An Apple-ViVOtech Rumor; Google Invests in a Gateway
In an example of how fast news can spread in the over heated atmosphere of mobile payments, news items and blog postings appeared on Monday and Tuesday suggesting that Apple Inc. is angling to buy Vivotech Inc., a vendor of hardware and software for contactless payments. At the same time, …
Read More »DataTreasury’s Trial Victory Doesn’t Bring Legal Marathon to an End
The jury verdict rendered Friday in favor of a small software company that says big banks and processors are trampling on its electronic-check patents may have boosted that company's cause but it hardly brings down the curtain on what has been a costly legal marathon for the payments industry. “We're …
Read More »All-Digital Checks Get a Boost from an ‘Outsider’ Technology Startup
The concept of an all-digital check, which surfaced in a paper published in November by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, could move from theory to reality in a matter of months now that a technology startup in Atlanta has won a pair of patents covering applications of the idea. …
Read More »Bill-to-Carrier Rivalry Heats up with Danal’s Verizon Breakthrough
Competition in the bill-to-carrier mobile payments market is heating up with Verizon Wireless's announcement it will offer the service directly to consumers through Danal Inc.'s BilltoMobile payment service within the next few weeks. The deal marks Seoul, Korea-based mobile payments operator Danal's first contract in the U.S. Danal is in …
Read More »FrontStream’s Fast Transact Deal Shows Some M&A Thaw
Growing independent sales organization FrontStream Payments Inc. made another deal last week that could be a sign that merger-and-acquisition activity in the merchant-acquiring industry is warming up after a recession-induced chill. The transaction also illustrates that private-equity firms see the merchant-acquiring space as a fertile ground for new investments. In …
Read More »Fifth Third Processing Jumps on the End-to-End Encryption Bandwagon
The merchant-acquirer encryption and tokenization train picked up speed this week when Fifth Third Processing Solutions, one of the nation's biggest payment processors, announced it would offer its merchants end-to-end encryption and tokenization systems for protecting cardholder data. Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Processing's technology comes from Voltage Security Inc., the Palo …
Read More »Discover’s Hybrid Growth Strategy Boosts Network Volumes
Discover Financial Services now has more than 100 bank card merchant acquirers booking small to medium-sized merchants for its network, the company reported today at an investor presentation in New York City. Discover predicts that those acquirers will enable Discover acceptance in 97% of their new merchant sales in 2010's …
Read More »First Data: Embrace of SD Cards Won’t Weaken Sticker Commitment
First Data Corp., which for the past couple of years has been pushing its Go Tag contactless-sticker technology, announced on Tuesday it will promote a new contactless technology for mobile phones based on Secure Digital memory cards. But the massive Atlanta-based processor says the move will have no impact on …
Read More »In Prepaid, Issuers And Networks Will See Fastest Revenue Growth
The continuing boom in general-purpose prepaid cards will lift all providers' boats, but some industry players will see revenues grow faster than others, according to new report from Aite Group LLC. The Boston-based research firm estimates that the total revenue pie of the so-called network-branded prepaid card industry will grow …
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