Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
A network fee introduced this year by Visa Inc. hands so-called merchant aggregators like PayPal Inc. an unfair cost advantage relative to traditional acquirers and independent sales organizations, a top executive with one leading ISO contends. The fee, known as the fixed acquirers network fee (FANF), is a complicated affair …
June, 2012
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21 June
Western Union Launches Mobile Bill Feature in Face of Rival Services from Startups
With a number of startup companies now offering bill-pay capability based on smart phones, old-line payments companies are starting to respond with services of their own, relying on their reputations as established players in electronic payments. One of the first is The Western Union Co., which this week introduced a …
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21 June
Eye on Security: Account Takeovers And PayPal’s New ‘Bug Bounty’
A recent survey of financial institutions and service providers shows that while attempted takeovers of financial accounts by computer hackers and thieves increased last year, the percentage of successful takeovers dropped. Meanwhile, PayPal Inc. announced a program to pay security researchers for finding flaws in its system. In its second …
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20 June
Facebook Ditches Credits Just 11 Months After Mandating Developers Use Them
Facebook Inc. has just done the equivalent of dumping the euro in favor of national currencies with its new policy that will phase out the Facebook Credits virtual currency. The huge social network, which also is introducing a way to pay for subscriptions, says the changes will simplify the user …
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19 June
Discover’s Chief Hits Visa’s Strategy To Defend Its Debit Market Share
The chief executive officer of Discover Financial Services isn’t too pleased with what Visa Inc. is doing to retain its lead in the debit marketplace now that the Durbin Amendment’s transaction-routing provisions are in place. Discover owns the Houston-based Pulse network, which like other electronic funds transfer networks stands to …
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19 June
Eyeing Larger Merchants, Square Enhances Apps with Loyalty Functions
Hard on the heels of its announcement last week that it is now processing for some 2 million merchants and individuals, mobile-acceptance startup Square Inc. on Tuesday said it has added customer-loyalty functions to its Pay with Square and Square Register applications. The new functions will allow both merchants and …
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18 June
Dynamics Gets Set to Push its ePlate Loyalty Platform into Entertainment, Retailing
The music and movie industries as well as retailers are next on startup Dynamics Inc.’s list of targeted industries for its ePlate loyalty application. Launched in April, ePlate embeds computer architecture into a credit card, enabling consumers to rewrite information from a choice of loyalty programs to the card’s magnetic …
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14 June
Check 21 Saved U.S. Payments System $3 Billion-Plus in 2010, Fed Paper Estimates
Check 21 saved the U.S. payments system more than $3 billion in 2010 as paper check clearing gave way almost entirely to image clearing, according to a paper released recently by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. The paper sets out what is believed to be the first effort at …
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14 June
PayPal’s Foray into TV Commerce Could Help Recruit Merchants for POS Processing
PayPal Inc.’s latest effort to enter the nascent business of processing transactions for merchandise shown on television—so-called T-commerce—could also help recruit more merchants for the San Jose, Calif.-based company’s point-of-sale payment service, a PayPal executive tells Digital Transactions News. As it turns out, merchants that agree to accept PayPal at …
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12 June
Global Payments Breach Exposes Data From Applicants for Merchant Accounts
The hackers who broke into merchant processor Global Payments Inc.’s computer systems added a new chapter to the disreputable history of data breaches by gaining access to information from applicants for merchant accounts, the company disclosed late Tuesday. Global’s revelation apparently is the first publicly known incidence of merchant-applicant information …