Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

November, 2019

• 19 November

  Eye on Fintech: Payments Firms Attract Venture Funding; PSCU’s $100 Million Investment

  

  Venture capital continues to flow to payments companies, which ranked among the top recipients of financial-technology sector funding in the third quarter, according to a new report. And credit-union services organization PSCU announced it will invest $100 million in its payments platform over the next three years. Sweden-based Klarna, a …
• 19 November

  HSBC Adds Real-Time Payments and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 11/19/19

  

  HSBC Bank USA N.A. has made a real-time payments service, via The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC, available to its commercial and institutional clients. HSBC said these clients have been able to receive real-time payments since July and now can send them. HSBC expects to roll out the service to its consumer …
• 19 November

  COMMENTARY: One Year Later, GDPR Is a Blessing in Disguise for Financial Institutions

  

  The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect in May 2018. More than one year later, most financial organizations—including banks, payment and trading services, and global exchanges, as well as the companies that rely on them—are struggling to maintain GDPR compliance.  While prohibitive costs and the derailment of other, …
• 18 November

  Visa Confirms the FTC Is Probing Its Debit Transaction Routing Practices

  

  Confirming rumors that the Federal Trade Commission is looking into issues involving debit card transaction routing, Visa Inc. late last week reported the Federal Trade Commission has asked it to voluntarily provide information about its routing practices. In a brief notice in its fiscal 2019 report to the Securities and …
• 18 November

  As the E-Commerce Gateway Business Heats up, Elavon Strikes a Deal for Sage Pay

  

  U.S. payments companies looking to acquire properties in key markets like e-commerce and merchant acquiring have found a willing seller in Sage Group PLC. Early Monday, the company announced it agreed to sell its payments gateway, Sage Pay Europe Ltd., to Atlanta-based Elavon for $300 million. The deal will bring …
• 18 November

  Checkers Contends With POS Malware and other Digital Transactions New briefs from 11/18/19

  

  Checkers Drive-in Restaurants Inc., which in May said malware had affected certain of its Checkers and Rally’s locations, said it is aware the malware had affected one more Checkers and Rally’s location and also that the malware had been re-installed at “several” locations the company had previously identified as affected. The company …
• 15 November

  Eye on Acquiring: Repay’s Card Volume up 40%, and Usio and Net Element Report Earnings

  

  In its first full quarter as a public company, Repay Holdings Corp. said its card-payment volume of $2.6 billion was a 40% increase over the 2018 third quarter. Payments providers Usio Inc. and Net Element Inc. also reported their earnings results. Atlanta-based Repay, which acquired APS Payments and TriSource Solutions …
• 15 November

  Could a Move in the German Parliament Break Apple’s Hammerlock on the NFC Chip?

  

  Ever since Apple Pay debuted in 2014, Apple Inc. has kept the near-field communication chip in its devices off-limits to payment apps from other companies. But now legislation has appeared in Germany that may force the computing giant to grant access to that all-important chip, which allows Apple phones and …
• 15 November

  Bill Could Restrain Tech Firms’ Financial Services Projects and other Digital Transactions New briefs from 11/15/19

  

  U.S. Rep. Chuy Garcia (D-Ill.) planned this week to introduce bills that would bar tech firms from developing their own cryptocurrencies and make it more difficult for non-financial firms to obtain charters for industrial-loan corporations, a form of a bank, according to Politico. Garcia’s office did not immediately respond to a request …
• 14 November

  Integrated Payments Help Priority Technologies Move Beyond Subscription Billers

  

  Merchant processor Priority Technology Holdings Inc. posted an 11% increase in payment volume in the third quarter despite the wind-down of its once-sizable processing business for online subscription billers. Alpharetta, Ga.-based Priority said it processed $10.8 billion in merchant bank card volume versus $9.71 billion in 2018’s third quarter, on …