Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
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 »Shopify Launches Payments Service To Ease Online Sales for Small Sellers
Shopify Inc. hopes to lure small online sellers by the thousands to its e-commerce platform by making the typically vexatious business of taking payments as easy as possible. On Monday, the Ottawa-based company announced Shopify Payments, a service that lets Web merchants sign up to accept a broad range of …
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 »PayPal Bolsters Its Physical Presence Through Deals With Alliance Data, MoneyGram
By Peter Lucas PayPal Inc. on Tuesday took more steps toward strengthening its in-store presence, and at the same time broadened the reach of its Bill Me Later lending service to consumers carrying private-label cards. Both arrangements are the result of an agreement with Alliance Data Systems Corp., a big …
Read More »With Discover Link Active, eBay Boss Says PayPal Seeking to ‘Build Out’ POS ‘Ubiquity’
PayPal Inc.’s point-of-sale initiative, which has seen the e-commerce processor penetrate thousands of stores while stirring controversy with at least some incumbent processors, will focus on achieving “ubiquity” and solving consumer “pain points” for the next several years, eBay Inc.’s chief executive said on Wednesday. The initiative, which began early …
Read More »A Startup Sees Dramatic Growth with an API for Two-Click E-mail Transactions
As mobile-payments strategists struggle with clunky checkouts that lead to abandoned sales, a startup based in Albuquerque, N.M., is seeing dramatic early success with a 3-month-old solution that allows consumers to buy products from e-mail messages with a pair of clicks. The company, @Pay LLC, has signed up more than …
Read More »With EMV Looming, Fears of Rising Online Fraud Will Drive Biometrics, Expert Says
Biometric authentication will be in widespread use by financial institutions and online merchants by 2015, a payments-security expert predicts. “We’re at the threshold, it’s going to be common in the next year or so,” Al Pascual, a senior analyst at Javelin Strategy & Research, tells Digital Transactions News. Pascual forecasts …
Read More »PayPal’s Latest T-Commerce Deal Offers Potential to Reach More Than 80 Million Households
PayPal Inc. this week struck a deal that offers the San Jose, Calif.-based processor the potential to reach TV viewers in more than 80 million U.S. households. The deal, with San Francisco-based commerce-platform vendor Delivery Agent Inc., furthers PayPal’s recent push into the nascent market for so-called T-Commerce transactions, or …
Read More »Square Fills an Online Gap with Its New Square Market E-Commerce Service
Mobile-payments processor Square Inc. on Wednesday moved to fill a gap in its product lineup by introducing Square Market, an e-commerce service for small U.S. merchants. Square Market publishes a merchant’s Web pages at no charge, doesn’t charge for listings, and charges a straight 2.75% of the sale for a …
Read More »Banks’ ‘Shift in Priorities’ Leaves Secure Vault Payments in the Lurch
n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n Merchant pricing is 0.9% of the sale plus 30 cents, which Gonthier says is only about one-third the cost of a credit card or PayPal Inc. transaction.
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