With consumers and businesses flocking to online commerce, companies of all sizes are reinforcing their technology for accepting transactions and rating them for risk. The latest example is the giant credit-reporting company Equifax Inc., which on Friday said it is paying $640 million to buy Kount Inc., a 14-year-old Boise, …
January, 2021
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6 January
A Last-Minute Presidential Ban on China-Based Payment Apps Puzzles Payments Experts
An executive order by President Donald Trump banning a pair of major Chinese payments apps comes in the waning days of his administration and may leave more questions than it answers, observers say. The order, issued Tuesday, prohibits transactions on eight China-based apps, including the hugely popular Alipay and WeChat …
December, 2020
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21 December
Scuppered Talks Between FIS And Global Payments Point to Enduring Importance of Size
Mega-merger fever hasn’t subsided in the payments industry. A combination of FIS Inc. and Global Payments Inc., which have reportedly broken off talks to merge in a deal that could be valued at $70 billion, would represent a continued push for yet more economies of scale in a business whose …
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9 December
Hudson Executive Capital And Apollo Global Management Bid to Take Cardtronics Private
Cardtronics plc, a leading non-bank ATM deployer, has been tendered an offer by Hudson Executive Capital and Apollo Global Management for its outstanding shares of stock at $31 per share in cash. Cardtronics, which operates more than 270,000 ATMs, has a less than 10% share of the global ATM business …
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8 December
Capital One Halts BNPL Credit Card Transactions
Capital One Financial Corp. is barring all of its credit cards from being used for point-of-sale lending transactions, aside from the United Kingdom where buy now, pay later products are being reviewed for possible regulation. The move comes as overall buy now, pay later providers garner a lot of attention, …
November, 2020
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16 November
CVS Pharmacy’s Big QR Code Deployment Goes Live With PayPal And Venmo Options
Payments based on QR codes went live Monday at 8,200 CVS Pharmacy stores nationwide, the largest such deployment so far in the U.S. market and a major step forward for PayPal Holdings Inc., which announced in July its plans to enable the technology for CVS and other chains. With the …
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6 November
Visa Hits Back After the Justice Department Challenges the Network’s $5.3-Billion Plaid Deal
Visa Inc. on Thursday delivered a rebuke to the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit attempting to block its $5.3 billion acquisition of Plaid Inc., calling the lawsuit “legally flawed and contradicted by the facts.” The Department of Justice, which had filed the suit hours earlier, charges that Visa’s deal for …
October, 2020
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23 October
ExxonMobil Deploys QR Codes And NFC Tags for Streamlined Mobile Payment at the Pump
Petroleum giant ExxonMobil Corp. is adding QR code and near-field communication-enabled tags to its fuel pumps for consumers using Apple Pay or Google Pay. ExxonMobil says more than 11,500 U.S. Exxon and Mobil stations will have the tags by year’s end. Users can hold their iPhones or Android phones against …
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23 October
‘We Hope the Worst Is Behind Us’ Says AmEx’s Boss As the Company Shows Signs of a Comeback
As the economy registers a tentative recovery from the deep recession caused by Covid-19, payments networks are doing likewise. This is probably no more true than with American Express Co., whose concentration in the travel-and-entertainment market caused the company’s financials to nosedive earlier this year as the pandemic grounded airlines, …
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20 October
QR Codes Reach the Next Stage of Development for Payments: Fraud Detection
With merchant adoption of contactless payment solutions accelerating due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Incognia, a provider of fraud-detection applications, announced an app Tuesday to detect Quick Response code fraud. The application uses location behavioral biometrics to create a digital fingerprint for the consumer’s identity. It uses the buyer’s real-time and …
