News

May, 2021

• 3 May

  Canadian Fintech Mogo Beefs up on Cryptocurrency With a Major Purchase of Ether Coins

  

  Financial-services technology provider Mogo Inc. on Monday announced the purchase of 146 Ether coins at an average price US$2,780. Ether is the cryptocurrency used by Ethereum, an open-source, blockchain-based, decentralized software platform. The purchase of Ether coins is part of Mogo’s asset-investment strategy, which includes investing up to 5% of …
• 3 May

  Merchants Put the Fed in the Crosshairs of a Lawsuit Seeking to Have Debit Costs Reduced

  

  Merchants have complained for years that they pay too much for debit card acceptance. Late last week, they took their beef to the federal courts with a lawsuit alleging a ceiling set on debit card fees a decade ago by the Federal Reserve is too high and seeking to have …
• 3 May

  Flywire Readies for Possible IPO and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 5/3/21

  

  Payments company Flywire Corp. has filed a registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering. The number of shares to be offered and their price range have not yet been determined. The action follows the company’s submission in March of a confidential draft registration statement for …

April, 2021

• 30 April

  COMMENTARY: Why the PLC Is Bad News for Fair Competition in Payments

  

  The chief executives of Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover last month came together to start the Payments Leadership Council, a group that also includes the heads of FIS, Fiserv, and Global Payments. Thus, we now have witnessed the final step by adding the keystone to the pyramid of power …
• 30 April

  QuickBooks Suffers Payroll ACH Failure and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 4/30/21

  

  A processing failure has interfered with direct deposit of payroll for an undetermined number of businesses using Intuit Inc.’s QuickBooks payroll service. In response to numerous posts on Twitter about the incident, Intuit posted a link to the following notice: “Some payroll customers are reporting they have not received their direct deposit …
• 29 April

  How the Pieces of Mastercard’s ‘Multirail’ Strategy Are Starting to Fit Together

  

  You wouldn’t always know it, listening to the top executives at Visa and Mastercard, but these two rival networks are still chiefly card networks. Thursday morning, Mastercard Inc. laid out for equity analysts an update on what it has called its “multirail strategy,” major moves into account-to-account money transfers, real-time payments, …
• 29 April

  Square’s New ACH Feature for Invoices Aims at Larger Sellers

  

  To help large businesses reduce payment transaction costs and provide another option for how they receive payments, Square Inc. on Wednesday announced it will accept automated clearing house payments on Square Invoices.  The addition of ACH payments could also enable Square to attract large, complex businesses—such as wholesalers, home-repair specialists, …
• 29 April

  FIS Unveils RealNet, a Network-of-Networks Approach to Real Time Payments

  

  The real-time payments movement continues to build momentum in the United States with FIS Inc.’s announcement Wednesday of RealNet, a cloud-based, software-as-a-service platform that enables businesses, consumers, and governments to initiate account-to-account transactions. RealNet, which FIS describes as a network of networks, will leverage The Clearing House Payment Co. LLC’s …
• 29 April

  SMBs Value Digital Payments More Than a Year Ago and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 4/29/21

  

  A survey from the Electronic Transactions Association and The Strawhecker Group found that 43% of small and mid-size businesses view digital payments as more important to their operations now than before the Covid-19 pandemic. The survey of 528 SMBs also found that 34% said they are experiencing an increase in contactless payments.InComm …
• 28 April

  Shopify’s Wallet Gets a Lift as its Shop App Climbs to 19 Million Active Users

  

  Everyone has heard of Amazon, but there’s less talk about Canada’s Shopify Inc., even though the fast-growing, Ottawa-based commerce platform now ranks second to Amazon in share of retail e-commerce sales, with 8.6% versus 39% for the Seattle-based giant, according to eMarketer. On Wednesday, Shopify issued an update on just …