Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Digital wallet? Try explaining that concept to your grandmother. New research from comScore Inc. says that very few consumers understand what a digital wallet is and even fewer have used one, the notable exception being PayPal Inc. The November study by the Internet data-measurement firm found that only 51% …
Read More »Eye on M-Commerce: Amazon Coins a Digital Currency; Google Cites New ‘Forms of Payment’
Amazon.com Inc. on Tuesday said it will jump into the digital-currency market with Amazon Coins, a payment product it will roll out in May on for its popular tablet, the Kindle Fire. Users of the device will be able to redeem the new currency on the Amazon Appstore, which …
Read More »Eye on Acquisitions: ACI Snags Online Resources; FIS Swallows mFoundry
Thursday, Jan. 31, 2013, will go down as one of the payments industry’s more notable days of the deal. First, payments-software developer ACI Worldwide Inc. announced plans to buy Online Resources Corp. in a deal that values the electronic bill-payment and presentment technology provider at $263 million. Then the big processor …
Read More »Casting a Shadow on Social Commerce, Payvment Shuts Down, Sells Itself to Intuit
Intuit Inc. on Monday acquired the assets of Palo Alto, Calif.-based Payvment Inc., a 3-year-old vendor of shopping-cart and payment tools for merchants operating on social networks. Terms of the deal, which capped a series of developments that for some observers cast doubt on the market for so-called social …
Read More »NACHA’s Bill-Pay Council Puts the Finishing Touches on Its QR-Code Guidelines
Mobile bill payments took a step forward Thursday when automated clearing house network overseer NACHA reported that its Council for Electronic Billing and Payment (CEBP) had developed final guidelines for consumers to use Quick Response (QR) codes on bills to facilitate electronic payments. The guidelines are voluntary for billers, banks …
Read More »On the Rise, Mobile Bill Pay Could Spur More E-Bill Presentment, Card Usage
U.S. consumers are rapidly turning to mobile devices to pay bills, and that trend in turn is likely to encourage more card usage for bill payment and more electronic bill presentment, according to a study released this week. Some 8% of households with an Internet connection paid at least one …
Read More »Will Apple Press Forward Or Take a Pass on Passbook Payments?
n Passbook? The topic of Apple Inc.’s loyalty application didn’t come up Wednesday afternoon when the leading Silicon Valley tech company’s top brass discussed their latest quarterly results, which stock analysts found disappointing. But some smart-phone industry observers see evidence that Apple is laying the groundwork for a full-fledged mobile-payments …
Read More »PayPal Says Discover Deal ‘on Track,’ Gets Set to Promote POS Service to Consumers
A buoyant John Donahoe, chief executive of eBay Inc., said on Wednesday that PayPal Inc.’s launch on the Discover Network is “on track” to begin toward the end of the second quarter. A key part of eBay unit PayPal’s strategy to bring its payment service to the physical point of …
Read More »Shazam Launches Its Bolts App, With Debit-Based P2P Transactions To Come
The Shazam debit network on Monday took a step closer to entering the fray for near real-time person-to-person payments with the launch of its Shazam Bolts mobile app. The app, which works on smart phones and tablets running Apple Inc.’s iOS software, will initially enable financial-institution customers to receive alerts …
Read More »Green Dot’s New Mobile App Could Crack a Few Bluebird Eggs
Prepaid card program manager Green Dot Corp. launched its GoBank mobile-banking application Tuesday. The app gives struggling Green Dot a powerful weapon to fight competitors for underbanked consumers or those simply dissatisfied with mainstream banks, including American Express Co., issuer of the new, low-fee Bluebird prepaid card account for customers …
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