Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
With biometric authentication now enabled in millions of smart phones and the focus of intense technological development, some payments experts are warning that biometric data can, just like old-fashioned passwords, be stolen, potentially leading to big problems for consumers and payment-service providers. “Biometrics are sure to proliferate in the next …
Read More »Eye on EMV: Merchant Adoption Shortfall; Visa Chip Card Tally Tops 212 Million
Patience, it seems, will be the watchword when it comes to merchant adoption of EMV chip card technology, while the number of cards issued bearing a chip continues to grow. A new report from The Strawhecker Group, a payments consultancy, finds that 37% of U.S. merchant locations are EMV-ready, falling …
Read More »Can PAR Keep Tokens Out of the Payments Sand Trap?
A new data element is getting a lot of discussion in merchant-acquiring and mobile-payments circles. It’s the so-called Payment Account Reference, or PAR, and it’s meant to associate all the payment tokens linked to a single credit or debit card primary account number, or PAN. But implementing PAR could be …
Read More »Visa’s Real Square Stake
Editor’s note: Read the latest by clicking here. A spate of media reports that Visa Inc. owns nearly 10% of Square Inc. are wrong and are based on a misreading of a filing Visa made Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to a person familiar with the matter …
Read More »Visa’s Stake in Square Is a Whole Lot Lower Than a Widely-Reported 10%
It was all over the financial press Friday morning that Visa Inc. owned nearly 10% of merchant processor Square Inc. But it turns out that Visa’s real stake is a tad lower—try less than 2%. The news stories, which started with a Reuters report out of India, were based on …
Read More »Payments Execs Already Foresee the Store Checkout Yielding to ‘Uberesque Approach’
While mobile wallets, near-field communication, and EMV have focused all eyes in the payments industry on the physical point of sale, some mobile-payments executives are starting to prepare for what they see as the fading away of the traditional checkout counter. Technology already exists that allows customers to order ahead …
Read More »Consumer Appeal of Peer-to-Peer Payments Widens As P2P Services See Volume Climb
With PayPal Holdings Inc. promoting its fast-growing Venmo peer-to-peer payments service and rumors that Apple Inc. is eyeing the business, P2P transfers are starting to take center stage in the consumer-payments business. And now a new survey indicates the service is growing in appeal to consumers for a variety of …
Read More »Despite Some Fourth-Quarter Improvements, Wall Street Punishes First Data
Leading payment processor First Data Corp. late Tuesday reported modest revenue and transaction growth in 2015’s fourth quarter, as well as better pre-tax profitability and an improved balance sheet in the wake of its October initial public offering, but investors still didn’t like what they saw. The Atlanta-based company’s stock …
Read More »The PCI Council Sets Security Rules for Token Service Providers as their Role Grows
With the coming of mobile payments and their attendant security issues expanding demand for so-called token service providers, the PCI Security Standards Council has issued rules intended to keep the tokenization environment safe. The Wakefield, Mass.-based PCI Council in December quietly released a 92-page document titled, “Additional Security Requirements and …
Read More »Eye on Branding: Vantiv Renames Mercury and Element; PayPal Debuts ‘New Money’ Campaign
Vantiv Inc. and PayPal Holdings Inc. are, separately, creating new looks for their brands. Vantiv, which bought integrated-payments specialist Mercury Payment Systems LLC in 2014 for $1.65 billion, is renaming Mercury and Element Payment Services, an integrated-payments provider it purchased in 2013, as a single unit called Vantiv Integrated Payments. This …
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