News

November, 2014

• 19 November

  Digital Wallets Are Pushing up Conversions, Making Them a Prime Target for Acquirers And Gateways

    Digital wallets, especially when used for mobile commerce, are gaining increasing favor among consumers, finds a report from the Adobe Digital Index, a research unit of Adobe Systems Inc., which carries implications for acquirers and payment gateways. In a survey of 400 U.S. consumers, Adobe found that the number …
• 19 November

  Data Breaches Continue To Cost Target and Home Depot a Bundle

  Target Corp. reported Wednesday that expenses stemming from the big data breach it disclosed 11 months ago now total $248 million. The Home Depot Inc., meanwhile, said Tuesday that the data breach it disclosed in September cost it $28 million on a pre-tax basis in its recently ended third quarter. …
• 18 November

  Mobile Commerce To Peak On Thanksgiving: Adobe

    Consumers are expected to use their smart phones and tablets to do more than check prices this holiday season. More of them expect to make mobile-commerce purchases—forecasted to reach $1.6 billion on Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday— finds the Adobe Digital Index, a research service from Adobe …
• 18 November

  Remain Calm: Mobile Pay Will Boom, but It Doesn’t Warrant a Media Frenzy, Analyst Says

  Mobile-payments volume will nearly triple from $51.5 billion this year to $141.7 billion in 2019, according to a new report from Forrester Research Inc. That’s pretty exciting news for payments networks, processors, banks, tech specialists, and others with a stake in the budding sector. But wait. Even with all that …
• 18 November

  The U.S. Marshals Service Plans Its Second Bitcoin Auction, This One Worth $19.2 Million

  The U.S. Marshals Service held its first auction of bitcoins in June, and now it’s planning an even bigger one for Dec. 4. Like the June 27 auction, the 50,000 bitcoins to be auctioned by sealed bid were seized in October 2013 from Ross Ulbricht, the alleged operator of the …
• 18 November

  First Data Plans Update for TransArmor That Will Bring Tokens to Sellers Regardless of Acquirer Ties

    First Data Corp. will update its TransArmor tokenization service in 2015 to make it platform-agnostic, while expanding the number of sales channels it is available through, says a First Data executive. Launched in 2010, TransArmor provides merchants a way to mask sensitive cardholder data by replacing them with a …
• 17 November

  Airport Renovation Includes iPads Where Passengers Can Spend Airline Miles

  Before the emergence of Bitcoin and other such alternative currencies, people collected and traded airline miles. Many still do, which is what United Airlines and OTG Management, an operator of restaurants in 10 North American airports, are counting on. The two companies on Monday announced holders of United frequent-flyer miles …
• 16 November

  Major Prepaid Card Providers Give a Polite Response to the CFPB’s Proposed Regs

  Some of the nation’s largest prepaid card companies are either giving a public thumbs up to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s proposed regulations for prepaid card accounts or at least not saying they’re spoiling for a fight with the federal government. Steve Streit, chairman and chief executive of Pasadena, Calif.-based …
• 14 November

  Pala Interactive To Use Optimal Payments for Its Online Gaming Service

    Pala Interactive LLC, an online gambling operator, will use payment-processing services from Optimal Payments Plc, Optimal announced this week. Online gambling revenue in the United States is forecasted to be $2.6 billion by 2017, according to one estimate. Another estimate, from Odobo and H2 Gambling Capital, forecasts $7.7 billion …
• 14 November

  While Google Wallet Is Ditching Digital Goods, It’s Likely to Stick with Other Markets

  Google Inc.’s decision to kill its application programming interface for digital-goods sales may have more to do with the expense and complexity of the market than with any underlying strategy to retreat from the digital-wallet business overall, experts say. Google on Thursday announced it will shut down the 2-year-old API …