A new micropayment platform called Qoins has just closed a first round of funding for $1 million. The app allows users to pay off debt by rounding up purchases to the nearest dollar and sending the excess to the creditor, with a focus on credit card and student debt. Qoins …
Read More »Credit Card Interchange Settlement Once Again Divides Merchants
Déjà vu, anyone? Similar to its now-moot predecessor agreement from 2012, the proposed $6.24 billion monetary-damages settlement in a big credit card interchange antitrust case announced Tuesday by Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. is drawing diverging reviews from merchants. Based on anecdotal comments and the history of the earlier settlement, …
Read More »A $6.2 Billion Pact May Be Only a Prelude to Difficult Haggling Ahead for Merchants And the Card Networks
Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. announced early Tuesday that they and defendant banks have agreed to settle for $6.24 billion merchants’ monetary claims stemming from 13-year-old litigation over credit card interchange. Today’s announcements represent the second settlement of the sweeping class action known as MDL 1720 pending in U.S. District …
Read More »With Stripe Terminal, the Online Payments Specialist Moves Into Face-to-Face Sales
Stripe, the San Francisco-based online payments company, is taking a step to get inside stores. The company on Monday launched Stripe Terminal, a service that puts Stripe’s processing software onto point-of-sale hardware devices that merchants can use to accept payments in their stores. The move follows similar migrations in recent …
Read More »Surcharging and Cash-Discount Programs Continue To Attract ISOs
Surcharges and discounts for cash aren’t brand-new pricing tactics, but interest in them by independent sales organizations is rising because of falling legal barriers and the potential profits. Repeated sessions about the topic were packed Thursday at the Western States Acquirers Association annual conference in Scottsdale, Ariz. The presenter was Ryan …
Read More »Data Breaches Register on the Stock Market, Too, And Payments Firms Are Hardest Hit
Data breaches bring a slew of bad consequences for the victim, not the least of which are the costs of lost business, remediation, and, possibly, litigation. But for publicly held entities, there’s an additional risk: a lasting hit to the share price. For 24 companies whose shares are traded on …
Read More »Bitcoin Has Calmed Down—And Fees Have Gotten Cheaper—But Will Merchants Bite?
For all the gyrations Bitcoin and its enthusiasts have experienced over the past 12 months, the digital currency has managed to trace a relatively calm track lately. It remains, however, an acquired taste for users, and while some independent sales organizations have begun efforts in recent weeks to sell it …
Read More »Transaction-Processor Stocks Beat the Market Once Again
Boosted by profits that mostly exceeded analysts’ expectations, payments companies in August once again beat the major stock indexes even though the markets themselves performed well, according to a new report from Barrington Research Associates Inc. Chicago-based Barrington said Wednesday that 27 publicly traded electronic-transaction processors it tracks posted a …
Read More »True Believers Insist Blockchain And Cryptocurrencies Will Take Over the World
The panelists were not subtle in assessing the future of digital currencies and the decentralized blockchain technology behind them. “Cryptocurrencies and blockchain will take over the world, it will be a bigger impact on the world than the Internet,” said investment banker Dennis O’Neill, chief executive of Chicago-based O’Neill Capital …
Read More »First It Was Trading Through Cash App. Now Square Patents a Network for Crypto Acceptance
The business of getting merchants to accept cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin has started to attract independent sales organizations and payments-tech firms alike, and now Square Inc. has jumped in with a proposed service that some experts say could help the payments-technology powerhouse grab a share of online volume. The U.S. Patent …
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