Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Long-time payments players who like to scoff at Bitcoin as an unproven payments instrument will have to reckon with the robust vote of confidence buyers and sellers of the 7-year-old digital currency have given it over the past few days. Bitcoin’s U.S. dollar value breached the $700 level late Sunday …
June, 2016
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14 June
Dunkin’ Donuts Pay-Ahead App Available and other Digital Transactions News briefs
• Merchant processor Square Inc. settled a lawsuit filed by a Washington University professor, Robert E. Morley, who said he invented Square’s card reader for smart phones. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but Square set aside $50 million in the first quarter to cover legal expenses from the …
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13 June
Mobile, Breaches, Gift Cards, In-Store Pickup Among Trends Driving Online Fraud
Forecasters have long predicted that the U.S. payments market’s move to EMV chip cards for in-person transactions will drive criminals into e-commerce fraud. Now data is emerging to show the nuances these fraudsters are exploiting, and how the rise in online fraud is hardly limited to the U.S. market. In …
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13 June
Apple Pay Will Come to the Web Later This Year—But Only for Safari Browsers
Apple Inc. is bringing its Apple Pay service, originally restricted to apps and the Apple mobile wallet, to e-commerce sites on the Web. Apple Pay on the Web will be available this fall as part of the iOS 10 mobile and macOS desktop software updates. “We wanted to bring the …
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13 June
TSYS Buys Rest of Joint Venture and other Digital Transactions News briefs
• Payments veteran Michael J. Schwartz was appointed interim chief executive of mobile-payments and -marketing firm Spindle Inc. upon founding chief executive Bill Clark’s resignation. Schwartz comes to the company from Fiserv Inc. Clark had been CEO since 2011. • Processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) purchased the 45% stake …
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12 June
Citing ‘Unacceptably High’ Fees, Wal-Mart To Stop Accepting Visa Cards in Canada
Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s 400-store Canadian unit announced Saturday that it will no longer accept Visa payment cards in its stores beginning with phased discontinuance starting July 18. “Following an evaluation of credit card transaction fees in Canada and the rest of the world, we have concluded the fees applied to …
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10 June
A Deal With Shell Boosts Chase Pay, But the Challenge of Consumer Usage Remains
JPMorgan Chase & Co. is lining up the necessary elements for its Chase Pay mobile service. The bank announced Thursday that more than 14,000 Shell Oil Co. locations potentially could accept the nascent mobile wallet. Chase shared few details, such as when Chase Pay might be accepted at Shell stations, …
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10 June
Cardtronics Secures More CTA Locations and other Digital Transactions News briefs
• ATM deployer Cardtronics Inc. reached a new agreement with the Chicago Transit Authority under which it will place almost 40 new ATMs at CTA passenger stations, replacing machines already at those stations, and install more machines at additional stations. The move, which expands on an agreement reached with the …
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9 June
Did a May Meeting With Durbin Staffers Prompt Visa to Back off on Its New Fee?
The payments industry may never know for sure what prompted Visa Inc. to back off on a potentially lucrative new fee aimed at issuers planning to defect to other networks. But a clue to the decision emerged Wednesday when U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin’s office issued a statement celebrating the move …
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9 June
After Tussling With Visa, Durbin Challenges MasterCard Over an Issuer Fee
U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin on Thursday asked MasterCard Inc. to explain an obscure fee with a clunky name that the senator believes penalizes MasterCard issuers when merchants exercise their transaction-routing rights under the Durbin Amendment with MasterCard debit card purchases. But MasterCard says issuers benefit whenever its cards are used, …