Point-of-sale

August, 2021

• 20 August

  E-Commerce Loses Some Momentum As Sales Slowed Down in the Latest Quarter

  

  The boom in e-commerce, which was touched off more than a year ago by the coronavirus pandemic, may be showing signs of losing steam. U.S. e-commerce sales in the second quarter totaled $222.5 billion, up 9.1% from the same quarter a year ago, according to numbers released Thursday by the …
• 20 August

  PayZen’s Hospital Bill Payment Plan and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 8/20/21

  

  Working with fintech PayZen Inc., the Geisinger Hospital system is launching a plan that allows patients to make payments over time at zero interest. The plan requires a minimum unpaid balance of $250 after insurance payouts.Mobile-parking app provider PayByPhone said its service now works with more than 2,400 spaces across the campus of …
• 19 August

  Mastercard’s Credit Card Fees Find Themselves in the Cross-Hairs of a U.K. Class Action

  

  While the two global payments networks have been embroiled in a controversy over merchant debit card fees in the U.S. market, they also face trouble in the United Kingdom over an even bigger issue: credit card interchange fees. That fact was thrown into relief early Thursday when Reuters reported the …
• 19 August

  Boku M-Payments Network Spans 90 Countries and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 8/19/21

  

  Boku Inc. launched what it says is the world’s largest mobile-payments network. The M1ST Payments Network reaches 5.7 billion mobile-payment accounts in 90 countries and offers more than 330 payment methods, the company says.Global payments provider Adyen NV said Just Eat Takeaway.com, an online food-delivery marketplace, will issue its prefunded Takeaway Pay Card …
• 18 August

  PayPal Ups the Ante in Buy Now, Pay Later By Dropping Late Fees

  

  With the popularity of the buy now, pay later alternative growing, especially for online purchases, PayPal Holdings Inc. announced Tuesday it will no longer charge late fees for missed payments on its installment products in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, effective Oct. 1. PayPal has already eliminated …
• 17 August

  Pulse Debit Study: Online And Contactless Usage Surges While Wallets Assert Themselves

  

  The story of debit cards in the pandemic year of 2020 turns out to have several chapters—including higher average tickets, a sharp swing to card-not-present usage, a dramatic surge in contactless adoption, and higher mobile-wallet usage. Meanwhile, account-to-account transfers turned out to be the fastest-growing form of debit, though usage …
• 17 August

  Vending-Payments Specialist Cantaloupe Targets Micro-Markets With Its Deal for Yoke

  

  Building on a strategy of growing share of payments in the unattended retail market, Cantaloupe Inc. announced Tuesday its acquisition of Delicious Nutritious LLC, a Los Angeles-based micro-market payments company that operates under the trade name of Yoke Payments. The purchase price was not disclosed. The deal gives Cantaloupe, which earlier this …
• 17 August

  A 4X Increase in Phishing Attack Costs and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 8/17/21

  

  The overall costs of phishing attacks on businesses have nearly quadrupled since 2015, rising from average losses of $3.8 million per company in 2015 to $14.8 million in 2021, according to research from cybersecurity and compliance company Proofpoint Inc. and Ponemon Institute.Uplift Inc., a buy now, pay later provider specializing in travel, …
• 16 August

  How Paysafe Sees Its SafetyPay Deal As a Major Move Into Open Banking

  

  Open banking has been a big trend in payments for some time, and now traditional payment processors are getting in on the action. Paysafe Group Holdings Ltd. early on Monday announced it has agreed to pay $441 million to acquire Miami-based SafetyPay, a 15-year-old provider of digital payments for cash-paying …
• 16 August

  Mastercard’s Magstripe Farewell and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 8/16/21

  

  Mastercard Inc. said it will slowly phase out the requirement that its branded cards have a magnetic stripe in favor of the EMV chip. Beginning in 2024, in most markets, newly issued Mastercard credit and debit cards will not be required to bear the magstripe. By 2033, Mastercard said none of …