Apple Inc. rattled the payments industry on Tuesday with its announcement of technology that will let merchants accept card and Apple Pay transactions directly on an off-the-shelf iPhone with no attachments, but rivals say they’re taking the news in stride. “We’ll feel some impact, we’ll feel it a little bit, …
Read More »Stripe Targets Easier On-Boarding and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 2/9/22
Stripe Inc. said it will use technology from Celonis SE to improve its user onboarding process for e-commerce merchants.Payments provider Adyen NV said it will open technology hubs in Chicago and Madrid as it builds out a global processing platform. The company maintains more than 25 offices around the world.In related news, Adyen reported it processed …
Read More »Apple’s Tap to Pay on iPhone Debuts and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 2/8/22
Apple Inc. launched Tap to Pay on iPhone, a service that enables U.S. merchants to accept Apple Pay and other contactless payment services with an iPhone and an iOS app. Long speculated, especially since Apple’s 2020 acquisition of Mobeewave Inc., which developed the ability to accept payments via an NFC link, Tap to Pay …
Read More »An Acquisitive Fiserv Adds Finxact for Cloud-Based Digital Banking Services
Fiserv Inc. has been an acquisitive company since its merger in 2019 with First Data Corp., and on Tuesday its top management said its latest acquisition will accelerate the company’s penetration of the growing market for digital-banking services provided not locally but through a cloud configuration. The $650-million deal for …
Read More »BofA Posts a Big January in Payments Thanks to Surging Migration Away From Paper
If the nation’s second-largest bank is any indication, total consumer payments are booming despite the pandemic, while digital alternatives are gaining ground fast, in part because of the pandemic. Bank of America Corp. reported early Monday spending by consumer customers in January rose 17% compared to January last year, resulting …
Read More »PayPal Logs A Strong Quarter As It Shifts Its Strategy to Boost User Engagement
As all payments companies know, some active accounts are more active than others. On Tuesday, PayPal Holdings Inc.’s top executives made it plain the company’s 2022 priority is to emphasize—and pour money into promoting—accountholder activity. “The shift is, we’re not going to throw marketing dollars at low-value customers coming in,” …
Read More »Block Closes on Afterpay, And Square Rolls It Out To Sellers in the U.S. And Australia
Five months after announcing its deal to acquire buy now, pay later provider Afterpay Ltd., Block Inc. is making Afterpay available to Square sellers in the United States and Australia. The move comes as Block, Square’s parent company, officially closed the Afterpay acquisition on Monday. Block agreed to buy Afterpay …
Read More »QR Code Transactions Are on the Rise, But Now So Are Concerns About QR Code Fraud
With the Covid-19 pandemic helping fuel broad adoption of Quick Response codes by merchants for payments and ordering, it was only a matter of time before criminals exploited the contactless technology. Fraudsters are creating fake QR codes that, when scanned, take consumers to a bogus landing page that collects payment …
Read More »MagicCube Launches Its Cloud-based Acceptance Platform For Mobile Devices
The vision of turning mobile devices into tap-and-go POS terminals took a big step forward Thursday as MagicCube Inc. announced i-Accept Cloud, an open, cloud-based softPOS acceptance platform. i-Accept Cloud is expected to simplify the creation of new merchant payment acceptance and digital commerce solutions. By connecting the currently siloed …
Read More »Mastercard: All in on Open Banking, But Not on Amazon’s Fee Dispute With Visa
Top executives at Mastercard Inc. made it plain early Thursday the card network is determined to develop its account-to-account payment capabilities, while maintaining its distance from the dispute between its rival Visa Inc. and the e-commerce juggernaut Amazon.com Inc. over transaction pricing. “That’s fundamentally a question for Visa and Amazon,” …
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