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More than 750,000 locations representing 17% of the U.S. face-to-face card-accepting merchant base are now enabled to accept EMV chip cards, Visa Inc. chief executive Charles W. Scharf reported Thursday. The EMV acceptance base is up 42% from the 529,000 locations active as of October, when the card networks’ U.S. …
Read More »More Mobile Payments This Year Will Likely Mean More Fraud Potential, FICO Warns
To the extent there is greater mobile-payments use among merchants and consumers this year, that increase will likely bring with it a greater potential for fraud. That’s the cautionary note from Fair Isaac Corp. executive T.J. Horan, vice president of fraud solutions at the analytics-software company. In-store mobile payments will …
Read More »Starbucks Gets a Jolt From Its Fast-Growing Mobile Offerings
Starbucks Corp. keeps adding digital caffeine to its mobile-payments and loyalty offerings built around a prepaid card. The Seattle-based coffee king on Thursday reported that 21% of its U.S. transactions were paid on the Starbucks mobile app in the quarter ended Dec. 27, up from 20% in the previous quarter …
Read More »Consumers Quickly Embracing Mobile Apps for Purchases and Banking, Verizon Study Finds
While consumer acceptance of mobile wallets has been painfully slow for wallet developers such as Apple Inc., new survey results from the nation’s largest mobile carrier show consumers are quite willing to use mobile apps in some form to buy things. Some 23% of smart-phone owners last year used an …
Read More »Samsung Pay Aims at Commerce Tools for Merchants And a Reseller Program for Acquirers
Samsung Pay, the mobile wallet that uses near-field communication (NFC) and magnetic secure transmission (MST) technology, is developing a set of simple tools merchants can use to create offers and manage loyalty programs. The tools should be available this year. That’s the word from Will Graylin, global co-general manager of …
Read More »The In-App Channel Is Vital For Apple Pay, But Activity Overall Remains Weak
The crucial role in-app payment plays in mobile-wallet usage emerged in high relief Monday in a report showing that almost one-third of all Apple Pay credit card transactions made in the last five months by surveyed consumers occurred within a merchant app rather than in a store. Over the same …
Read More »Mobile Wallets ‘Off to a Strong Start,’ But Backers Must Work Harder at Education
In the face of reports of generally mediocre mobile-wallet usage, a report issued this week indicates the picture may brighten soon. Thirty-nine percent of consumers have used a mobile-payments service in a store within the past year, and 73% of these have done so just within the past three months, …
Read More »First Wal-Mart. Now Target? What Retailer Wallets Mean for MCX’s CurrentC App
With Target Corp. reportedly planning its own mobile wallet, the nation’s fourth-largest retailer may some time next year join the largest, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., in launching a proprietary wallet app. That could not only add to the fragmentation of the nascent digital-wallet market, it could also indicate weakening attachment to …
Read More »The Fed Is Tweaking Its Next Payments Survey To Get More Info on Fraud and Mobile Payments
In payments-industry circles, the Federal Reserve System’s triennial Payments Study is one of the most eagerly awaited documents to come out of Washington. The sweeping study tracks the use of credit, debit, and prepaid cards, checks, and other non-cash payment methods. For its next survey, due out in about a …
Read More »The U.K.’s Yoyo Wallet Hopes Soon To Be Walking a Big Dog in U.S. Mobile Payments
By John Stewart While many observers might argue the U.S. payments market has plenty of mobile-wallet entries for the time being, a U.K. startup called Yoyo Wallet figures there’s room for one more. London-based Yoyo, which launched with university cafeterias nearly two years ago and has expanded to catering operations …
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