Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
While some transit agencies are in the process of implementing or mulling fare systems that will accept general-purpose contactless chip cards, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and vendor Masabi US Ltd. on Monday rolled out a smart-phone ticketing app for Boston commuter-rail passengers that requires no big capital investment in …
Read More »ShopKeep Pushes Trend Toward a Tablet-Based POS Managed from the Cloud
While much of the payments industry’s attention is on mobile payments, mobile technology is also starting to transform the traditional retail checkout. This week, a tablet-based point-of-sale startup called ShopKeep POS launched software to keep track of employee hours and to let restaurants modify orders on the fly. Also this …
Read More »Starbucks Debuts ‘Square Lite’ in 7,000 Stores, But More Features Are Coming
Three months after announcing their partnership, mobile-payments provider Square Inc. and coffee king Starbucks Corp. said Starbucks customers could now use the Square Wallet for purchases at 7,000 company-operated U.S. locations. The purchase process at Starbucks will be a bit different for users of the consumer-facing Square Wallet, formerly known …
Read More »Holding Patents on Mobile Acceptance, a Small Firm Won’t Rule out ‘Legal Remedies’
With a pair of U.S patents in hand, a small, Montreal-based engineering firm may have placed itself in a position to strongly influence the fast-growing market for mobile card acceptance. The patents, awarded last month to AnywhereCommerce, cover payments via a dongle connected to a mobile device’s audio jack, a …
Read More »Visa Reports Growth in Credit, Less Bleeding in Debit, Progress for Its V.me Wallet
Visa Inc. on Wednesday reported brisk growth in its credit business and a stabilizing debit market while touting progress for its new digital wallet, V.me. Overall, the results released for Visa’s fourth quarter show the world’s biggest payments network is wising up about how to cope with a new, more …
Read More »MasterCard Reports Debit Up, Credit Growth So-So, And a Tie-Up with Square
New PIN-debit business as a result of the Durbin Amendment continued to lift MasterCard Inc.’s transaction volume in the third quarter, though the No. 2 card network’s top executives warned on Wednesday that the big growth is likely to slow down. Meanwhile, MasterCard is turning its attention to juicing up …
Read More »Mobile-Payments Pioneer Obopay Puts Itself on the Block As Wallet Trend Heats up
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 »