Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Obopay Inc., a pioneer in mobile payments whose profile fell as mobile wallets gained momentum, has put itself up for sale, according to sources familiar with the matter. Details about the sale remain sketchy, including possible valuations and the identity of bidders, but sources say the 7-year-old company and its …
Read More »Isis Launches with Nearly 1,000 Merchant Locations, Nine Smart Phones
The carrier-backed Isis mobile-payment service debuted in a low-key launch Monday in Austin, Texas, and Salt Lake City with almost 1,000 merchant locations participating and its near-field communication (NFC) system workable on nine smart-phone models. Digital Transactions News counted 493 merchant locations in the Salt Lake area and 470 in Austin, for …
Read More »With Isis Finally Launching Its Two-City Pilot, Consumers Get a Chance To Decide Its Fate
It looks like it’s finally going to happen. The much-anticipated, much- delayed Isis mobile-payment venture backed by three big telecommunications companies is scheduled to go live on Monday in its test cities of Austin, Texas, and Salt Lake City. Now the ultimate consumers of the new system, mobile-phone users, will …
Read More »P2P Momentum Picks up Steam in Tandem with Nascent Real-Time Settlement Trend
The market for person-to-person payments, which has percolated on low heat for several years, is showing signs of turning up the temperature. As an example of how far the market has come, the two major P2P payments networks, Fiserv Inc.’s Popmoney and clearXchange, a system unveiled last year by Bank …
Read More »Mobile Can Generate Wide Range of Fees for Banks on New Services, Speakers Say
It’s time for bankers to stop looking at mobile technology merely as a cost cutter and start using it to make money, said speakers at a retail-banking technology conference on Tuesday. Banks that add a variety of new services to their mobile offerings ranging from in-store bar-code scanning to expedited …
Read More »Groupon Supplements Its New Payment Service With the iPad-based Breadcrumb System
n Online daily-deal leader Groupon Inc. followed up on its big payments announcement of last month with Wednesday’s national rollout of its Breadcrumb service, a point-of-sale system for restaurants, cafes, and bars centered on Apple Inc.’s iPad tablet computer. n Breadcrumb itself is not a payments service, but is …
Read More »Wal-Mart Just One of Many Merchants Behind MCX, Best Buy Exec Says
Merchant Customer Exchange, the planned mobile-payments network by and for retailers, is more than an interchange play controlled by Wal-Mart Stores Inc., according to an executive whose company is represented on the nascent network’s board of directors. Stephanie Swain, senior director of financial services at electronics retailer Best Buy Co. …
Read More »FIS Heats up Faster Funds Trend with Its PayNet Real-Time Network
The nascent market for faster funds transfers, which has been on the boil all year, heated up further this week with Fidelity National Information Services Inc.’s announcement of its real-time PayNet network. The new system, which relies on FIS’s NYCE Payments Network LLC debit switch, is live with 200 FIS …
Read More »Eye on Mobile: Facebook Adds Carrier Billing; AmEx Supports Apple’s Passbook
Facebook Inc. watchers have had their antennae sensitized for some time for any scrap of news that might indicate the massive social network’s tendencies in payments. The company’s Monday announcement that it has begun supporting carrier billing for digital goods sold on its platform appears to be no exception. Already, …
Read More »New Study Documents the Outsize Fraud Exposure from Mobile Payments
Even though merchants accepting mobile payments are in the minority and mobile-payment volume is low, losses from fraud incidents for those merchants are higher than for non-mobile-accepting merchants, according to the fourth annual “LexisNexis True Cost of Fraud” study sponsored by content provider LexisNexis Risk Solutions and conducted by Javelin …
Read More »