Digital Currency

NetCents Technology Inc. said it signed a 5-year reseller agreement with an undisclosed independent sales organization. The ISO will bundle NetCents’ gateway and cryptocurrency acceptance into its offerings. The Electronic Transactions Association and Worldpay are bringing 10 startup companies to the ETA’s annual Transact conference. The 10 companies, part of …

CannaTrac, a cashless mobile-payment service for the cannabis industry, released an application programming interface for point-of-sale software developers. JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon told investors the bank’s JPM Coin, a blockchain-based token now in test for intrabank corporate payments, one day could be offered to consumers, Bloomberg reported. …

A Visa-branded debit card from Shift Financial Inc. that enabled consumers with accounts at digital currency exchange Coinbase to spend based on funds held in their Coinbase accounts reportedly will cease operations in April, said the CoinTelegraph.com news site. The card, issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank, reportedly faced a limited …

On the heels of a robust holiday shopping season come some sobering statistics. The recently released 2018 “True Cost of Fraud” study by LexisNexis Risk Solutions shows a 35% increase in fraud for midsize to large e-retailers over 2017. In the retail sector, the monthly average of fraudulent transactions jumped to 306 from …

For years, banking and payments veterans have dismissed cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin but at the same time have shown interest in the digital currencies’ underlying technology, the blockchain. Now one of the world’s biggest banking titans is testing its own blockchain-based token, but its restriction of the system to its own …

JPMorgan Chase & Co. will within a few months begin testing its own cryptocurrency for wholesale payments between corporations and banks globally, according to CNBC. The new token, called JPM Coin, will be exchangeable at the rate of $1 each. The development may surprise some observers, given the harsh criticism …

Just 14% of U.S. smart-phone users are using mobile-payments services from smart-phone makers, such as Apple Pay from Apple Inc., according to a survey from Juniper Research, which says “the window of opportunity in the U.S. for mobile-payment providers like Apple Pay and Google Pay is closing fast.” The survey …

A consortium of academics is betting it has the formula to create a high-performance blockchain network capable of processing payments faster and at greater scale than competing blockchain networks. The network, called Unit-e, is expected to process transactions confirmed by consensus on the blockchain in 15 seconds. If realized, the settlement …

JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Chase credit card unit and the Marriott International Inc. hotel chain introduced a contactless cobranded card, the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card, to replace the Marriott Rewards Premier Plus card. American Express Co. announced the rebranding of its current portfolio of cards for customers of Marriott International Inc.’s …

The collapse of Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies in 2018 led to a general feeling of pessimism in the mainstream payments industry about the prospects for digital currencies, but at least one specialist processor apparently bucked the trend toward malaise. In a year-end review of its performance, Atlanta-based BitPay Inc. …