News

January, 2016

• 21 January

  Focusing on Big Banks And Merchants, ACI Sells Its E-Banking Unit to Fiserv

  Payments-technology provider ACI Worldwide Inc. said it plans to sell its Community Financial Services (CFS) unit to bank processor Fiserv Inc. for $200 million in cash. CFS, which provides online and mobile banking and payments and security services to community banks and credit unions, generated about 22% of ACI’s $1.02 …
• 21 January

  AmEx Plans $1 Billion in Cost Cuts As Part of an Effort to Rebound From a Sub-Par 2015

  In 2015, American Express Co. had a bad year. Hit hard by competitive pressures on merchant fees and cobrand-card returns, as well as swooning gasoline prices, the big card network on Thursday reported a 4% decline in revenue net of interest expense for the year to $32.8 billion, its first …
• 21 January

  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 …
• 20 January

  Flywire’s Deal to Buy Canada’s ScholarFX Adds to Its Growing Niche in Tuition Payments

  It’s often neglected in the payments business, but one of the fastest-growing markets is processing cross-border transactions for college and post-graduate students studying abroad. The business is dominated by wire transfers, but a startup called Flywire, which has served the market for more than four years, is enjoying fast growth. …
• 20 January

  Eye on E-Commerce: eBay Data on Holiday Shopping; ACI’s Attempted-Fraud Report

  E-commerce merchants and the payments companies providing them with merchant services have reason to be both happy and disappointed with the 2015 holiday season. On the one hand, merchants handled the voluminous number of e-commerce orders by using their physical stores to fulfill their online sales. The volume of these …
• 19 January

  Eye on Subscription Payments: Recurly Cyber Monday Boost; A Simpler ISO Approach

  Subscription payments, also known as recurring billing, is getting renewed attention in the payments industry from companies that provide direct-to-consumer services merchants use, like Recurly Inc., and some providing merchant services, like Fattmerchant Inc. Merchants selling goods and services paid for with subscription payments likely had a busy Cyber Monday …
• 19 January

  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 …
• 18 January

  Eye on the POS: VeriFone Snags AJB, Ingenico’s U.S. Growth, HP’s Retail Thrust

  With the National Retail Federation’s annual trade show kicking off Monday in New York City, a number of payments companies tried to get a head start on the show by releasing news over the weekend. Much of it concerns developments for the physical point of sale. Here’s a wrap-up of …
• 18 January

  For Acquirers, Federal And State Regulatory Scrutiny Shows No Signs of Abating

  As the payments industry contends with ongoing state and federal regulatory inquiries, the Electronic Transactions Association will release an updated version of its “Guidelines on Merchant and ISO Underwriting and Risk Monitoring” in February. The final edits are being made, says Deana Rich, principal of Deana Rich Consulting Inc., which …
• 15 January

  First Data Unveils Clover Go, an EMV-Capable Card Reader for Smart Phones, Tablets

  First Data Corp. on Friday said it is joining the market for card readers that plug into mobile phones. Its latest entry in its Clover line of point-of-sale technology is Clover Go, a credit and debit card reader that connects to smart phones and tablets via the mobile device’s headphone …