News

July, 2014

• 30 July

  Square Announces a Signature-Based Chip Card Reader, with Availability Early in 2015

  Square Inc. on Wednesday ended months of speculation with an announcement that it will begin offering an EMV card reader early next year. Square will start taking orders for the device, which will process chip-and-signature as well as mag-stripe transactions, later this year, the San Francisco-based company said. The move comes …
• 30 July

  First Data Reports Improved Financials And Plans To Buy Digital Gift-Card Provider Gyft

  In a busy day for First Data Corp., the leading payment processor on Wednesday reported a reduced quarterly loss and its best revenues since going private, and that it plans to buy digital gift-card services provider Gyft Inc. Thanks to recent tech-company acquisitions and moves to improve its debt-laden balance …
• 29 July

  With Optimal Routing in Place, Zooz Readies a Routing Engine for Omnichannel Merchants

  Zooz Mobile Ltd. is preparing to launch in September a transaction-routing engine that will let so-called omnichannel merchants run payments for e-commerce, mobile commerce, and in-store commerce through a single pipe. The engine, tentatively called the Omnichannel Generator, will seek out the optimal path for each transaction, allowing merchants to …
• 28 July

  Amazon Dongle Unconfirmed, But E-Commerce Giant Could Rely on Powerful Assets

  Amazon.com Inc. on Monday refused to comment on a report that the big online retailer is preparing to launch a mobile card reader to compete with Square Inc., PayPal Inc., and dozens of other vendors. “We can’t comment on rumors and speculation,” an Amazon.com spokesperson told Digital Transactions News by …
• 28 July

  Fearing Payment-Industry Control, Merchants Call for an ‘Open’ Tokenization Standard

    Merchant groups and payment-industry members both want to use tokenization to make it tougher for criminals to get to sensitive cardholder data, but a disagreement has erupted about the best way to do that. On Monday, the Food Marketing Institute, Merchant Advisory Group, National Association of Convenience Stores, National …
• 25 July

  Eye on Mobile: Zing’s Register Stresses Integrations; Amazon Blesses PayPal for Fire

  The arms race in the tablet-based point-of-sale market heated up on Friday with Zing’s launch of its Register application. Built for Apple Inc.’s iPad, the software-as-a-service product includes integrations with e-commerce platform Bigcommerce and email-marketing provider MailChimp on top of the expected payment-processing services. Further integrations with Intuit Inc.’s QuickBooks …
• 24 July

  Annual Wallet Payments Total More Than a Quarter Billion, According to Updated Fed Study

  Transactions using mobile wallets totaled at least 250.6 million and amounted to at least $9.5 billion in value in 2012, according to a payments report issued Thursday by the Federal Reserve. These results, part of a comprehensive update to a study released in December, represent the central bank’s first effort …
• 24 July

  Tokenization Plays the Central Role in Visa’s New Cloud Payment Suite

  Visa Inc. moved on Thursday to commercialize mobile payments using cloud-based near-field communication technology with its release of Visa Cloud Payment Solutions. A related development, the announcement of the upcoming debut of a tokenization service, is aimed at locking down cloud-based NFC and other digital payments. The new services include …
• 24 July

  Visa Sees a Digital-Payments Future, but the Present Is Still Producing Tidy Profits

  On the heels of a quarter that featured a nearly 10% increase in U.S. payment volume, Visa Inc. chief executive Charles W. Scharf signaled Thursday that the leading payment network is counting on new digital services to power future growth. Those services include the new Visa Checkout online payment service …
• 22 July

  Spurning Publicity, Amazon Launches a Mobile Wallet with Modest Features—So Far

  Without fanfare, Amazon.com Inc. last week introduced a trial version of its first digital wallet. The free Android app, known as Amazon Wallet, has been available since July 17 on Amazon’s own App Store and on Google Play. It is also available pre-installed on Amazon’s recently unveiled smart phone, the …