News

May, 2016

• 5 May

  Square’s Payment Volume Jumps 45%, but Growth Measures Cause Loss To Widen

  Boosted by a 45% increase in payment volume to $10.3 billion, Square Inc.’s adjusted revenues jumped 64% in the first quarter, but the merchant processor’s net loss doubled to $96.8 million on higher expenses as the company continued to invest like a startup for future growth. In its second earnings …
• 4 May

  How the Details Strongly Influence Merchant-Portfolio Valuations

  Independent sales organizations and merchant-services salespeople considering selling all or part of their merchant portfolios have to consider more than finding the right buyer, said a panel of acquiring specialists. While some portfolio valuations might spike as high as the 40s—referring to a multiple of the net monthly processing revenue—that’s not …
• 4 May

  Bitcoin Processor BitPay Introduces a Prepaid Visa Card

  BitPay Inc. made its name signing up merchants to accept the bitcoin digital currency, and now it’s adding a reloadable Visa prepaid card to its consumer-facing products. The card will enable users to make purchases at the millions of Visa-accepting merchants as well as the relative handful that accept bitcoin, …
• 4 May

  Kohl’s Brings Loyalty To Apple Pay and other Digital Transactions News briefs

  • Retailer Kohl’s says customers can now pay for purchases using their Kohl’s Charge accounts and earn points in its Yes2You Rewards program in approximately 250 stores with a single tap using Apple Pay. Kohl’s expects national availability later this month. Kohl’s says it is the first retailer to offer a …
• 4 May

  Green Dot Reports Mixed Results, but CEO Streit Says Prospects Are Improving

  With its contested annual shareholder meeting coming up in less than three weeks, embattled Green Dot Corp. chief executive Steve Streit on Wednesday said the prepaid card card and mobile-banking provider and tax-payment processor’s prospects are improving as key measures of customer activity strengthen. Pasadena, Calif.-based Green Dot reported first-quarter …
• 3 May

  With Wearables Set to Soar, MasterCard Prepares to Support Device Payments Later in 2016

  MasterCard Inc. expects the first wearable payment devices for use on its network to be available later this year, Sherri Haymond, senior vice president for digital payments for MasterCard, tells Digital Transactions News. The devices are part of MasterCard’s Commerce for Every Device Program, which is intended to add payment …
• 3 May

  Mitek’s Billion Deposits and other Digital Transactions News briefs

  • Imaging applications developer Mitek Systems Inc. said its Mobile Deposit service has processed more than 1 billion check deposits; more than 5,000 U.S. financial institutions and 70 million of their customers use Mobile Deposit. • Payments company Zooz closed on $24 million in funding that it will use for growth, …
• 2 May

  While Still Volatile, Bitcoin’s Price Generally Moves Upward As Blockchain Interest Rises

  While the payments industry has been buzzing lately with talk about the blockchain, Bitcoin has been reaching pricing levels it hasn’t seen in more than a year. The rally comes amid fresh optimism for a solution to a vexing capacity problem and for the blockchain itself, the distributed ledger that …
• 2 May

  UL Test Suite Approval And Other Digital Transactions News Briefs

  · Technology-testing provider UL says its cloud-based payments test suite has been approved by MasterCard Inc. It is used to test MasterCard mobile-payment applications. UL also says it now supports a new type approval program for mobile devices against an EMVCo standard. · TD Bank Merchant Solutions will offer small …
• 1 May

  Fake Emails With Sophisticated Social Engineering Tricks Are Proliferating, Intel Warns

  A well-crafted email message from an executive can cause employees to take swift action. That’s just what criminals hope for when they send phishing messages that purport to be from senior executives to more junior ones, says Scott Montgomery, vice president and chief technical strategist at Intel Security, the data-protection …