News

November, 2018

• 13 November

  More Consumers See Smart Phones As Crucial Shopping Tools, Though Their Payment Use Lags

  

  As the holiday shopping season swings into gear, look for more consumers using their smart phones for shopping—but not so much for making a mobile payment, says GfK, a Germany-based consulting firm, in its latest FutureBuy research. Forty-five percent of all U.S. consumers rank mobile devices, including smart phones and …
• 13 November

  Fresh From a $100-Million Funding Round, Poynt Sets a Goal To Be the Common OS for Smart POS Terminals

  

  Poynt Co., a startup supplier of intelligent payment devices, argues so-called smart terminals should have a common operating system like smart phones do. And in announcing a $100 million funding round on Tuesday, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company also argued it should be the one to provide that OS. Investors …
• 13 November

  Cequence Security Joins the Anti-Bot Battle

  

  [Image Credit: Any IP Ltd.] With malicious bots bombarding the Web, tech vendors are adding services to shield banks, retailers, and other firms with data behind login pages from the onslaught. The newest is Cequence ASP from Cequence Security, which the Silicon Valley firm says detects and ends attacks through …
• 13 November

  Fed Forms Faster Payments Council and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 11/13/18

  

  The Federal Reserve formally announced the creation of the U.S. Faster Payments Council, an industry organization intended to promote the adoption of secure faster-payment systems through industry collaboration and education. The 22 founding members include payment card networks, banks, Walmart Inc., and automated clearing house network governing body NACHA. The group is …
• 12 November

  JetPay Reports 14% Revenue Increase and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 11/12/18

  

  Addressing doubts among at least some sellers, eBay Inc. seller advocate Jim “Griff” Griffith said sellers “can put [their] consternation aside” regarding the marketplace giant’s new managed-payments program, which will not include traditional eBay payment method PayPal until next year. Online payments provider Stripe Inc. agreed to use Visa Inc.’s push-payment …
• 12 November

  Fallback Fraud Falls as Card Issuers Ramp Up Their Monitoring

  

  Fallback fraud, an offshoot of the counterfeit fraud that EMV chip cards are meant to reduce, declined over the past year, according to new findings from Auriemma Consulting Group. Fallback fraud refers to fraud resulting from would-be EMV payments resorting to the credit or debit card’s back-up magnetic stripe because …
• 9 November

  PayFacto Debuts With an Eye on Merchants, Payfacs, and Gateway Services

  PayFacto Inc., the new name for a combination of what had been three separate companies, launched with a mission to cultivate merchants with a trio of payments services. Montreal-based PayFacto is the result of combining B2Billing, CT-Payments, and Supreme Payments. Each of the Canadian firms had different specialties that PayFacto …
• 9 November

  MoneyGram Hit by Government Settlement, Declining Revenues

  

  Shares of wire-transfer provider MoneyGram International Inc. tumbled 29% Friday morning after the company reported declining revenues and a $125 million settlement with the federal government over lax fraud controls at some agent locations. The settlement involves “allegations that the company failed to take steps required under a 2009 Federal …
• 9 November

  AmEx Scores a Breakthrough in China With a License to Process Domestic Payments

  

  The major U.S. payment card networks have been trying to set up shop to process domestic transactions in mainland China for years, only to encounter government resistance. But American Express Co. announced a breakthrough Friday with a deal to become the first overseas network to win an OK to operate …
• 9 November

  Most—73%—Will Shop in Stores This Holiday Season and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 11/9/18

  

  A survey of 1,000 U.S. adults found 73% will shop at a store for gifts this holiday season, but 13% will also use a virtual assistant, such as Siri or Alexa. Some 57% will use a computer and 42% a mobile device, according to the poll, conducted by merchant processor …