Kabbage Inc. launched Kabbage Payments, a payments service for small businesses. Kabbage provides merchant lending and uses a payment-facilitator model for the Kabbage Payments subsidiary.American Express Co. revamped its 50-year-old Green Card with a new suite of benefits and rewards. Now called Green from Amex, the card’s fee is $150, up from …
Read More »How PayPal Plans to Leverage Its Newly Won Foothold in Online Payments in China
Top management at PayPal Holdings Inc. made it clear Wednesday the company will continue to hunt for acquisitions and intends to leverage its recently won clearance to acquire a 70% stake in China’s Guofubao Information Technology Co. Ltd., better known as GoPay. The Chinese venture, in which PayPal will become …
Read More »Discover’s Payment Volume Increases 7% and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 10/23/19
Discover Financial Services reported its Payment Services unit, which includes activity on the Pulse electronic funds transfer network, on Diners Club cards, and with network partners, recorded $62.6 billion in volume in the third quarter, up 7% year-over-year. Volume on Pulse alone increased 5% to $47.5 billion. With Discover network proprietary …
Read More »Online Merchants Are Starting to Deploy the Big Networks’ Common Buy Button
The long-awaited common buy button became a reality Tuesday with an announcement from the four major payment card networks that they have enabled the technology for three e-commerce merchants. Half a dozen more are expected to come online for the technology, called Secure Remote Commerce, by the end of the …
Read More »Many Happy Returns? Not So Much These Days, According to the Latest Survey Results
Payments typically flow from consumer to merchant, but in the case of merchandise returns, they flow the other way, and it turns out returns are an almost universal experience these days. That’s putting pressure on merchants to streamline the returns process and find ways to deal with consumer sensitivity about …
Read More »AmEx’s Discount Rate Returns to Its Year-Ago Level
Issuer and acquirer American Express Co. said its global third-quarter discount rate—what merchants pay to accept the brand’s credit cards—was 2.39%, a slight increase from 2.38% a year ago. The uptick comes more than a year after AmEx said it would shave its worldwide discount rate in an effort to boost …
Read More »Shopify Acquires 6 River Systems and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 10/18/19
Payments and retail-technology provider Shopify Inc. announced it has closed on its acquisition of 6 River Systems Inc., a developer of cloud-based software and mobile robots for fulfillment. Terms were not announced.Fast Park, which operates parking garages near airports, announced it will accept credit and debit cards exclusively for payment at all …
Read More »A ‘Thriving’ ACH Logs 9.5% Growth, Adding to a Recent Record of Quarterly Expansion
With same-day transaction growth sizzling, the automated clearing house network overall notched another quarter of robust growth. The system logged 6.2 billion transactions in the quarter ended Sept. 30, up 9.5% over the third quarter of 2018, according to figures released Tuesday by Nacha, the network’s governing body. Total payment …
Read More »Samsung POS Coming and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 10/15/19
Days after launching services that allow users to make international remittances and use a virtual prepaid card for payments, Samsung Electronics Co. launched Samsung POS, an app that it says will let merchants accept near-field communication payments on their mobile devices. Developed with payments-technology firm Mobeewave, Samsung POS is aimed at micro-merchants and other small …
Read More »The Tires Begin To Roll Off Libra as Visa, Mastercard, eBay, and Stripe Withdraw
Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc., merchant processor Stripe Inc. and online marketplace eBay Inc. said Friday afternoon they will not join the Facebook-backed Libra cryptocurrency project. The defections came a week after PayPal Holdings Inc. became the first of the Libra Association’s 28 tentative members to withdraw in the face of …
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