Following a series of accounting fraud scandals that resulted in the insolvency of German processor and payments provider Wirecard AG, Banco Santander will be acquiring their payment technology assets for €100 million. The acquisition only includes the assets related to merchant services and payment processing with the approximately 500 employees who manage the assets, who
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After leaving interchange rates mostly unchanged for the past decade, Visa sent a letter to partner banks outlining the coming changes to swipe fees that will roll out in two phases beginning in April then October this year. While high volume supermarkets as well as those with education and real estate merchant category codes (MCCs)
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Visa recently released data and figures regarding EMV usage in the first full month of purchases following the October 1st EMV liability shift, adding that they are “extremely encouraged” with the 42 percent increase in chip-on-chip transaction volume and the 49 percent increase in merchant locations that can accept EMV in just one month’s time. The
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Visa Inc., the U.S. based publicly traded organization, announced on Monday November 2nd that they would be acquiring Visa Europe Ltd., their London-based counterpart, for $23.4 billion in cash and stock. The acquisition will increase the number Visa Inc. payment card accounts by 20 percent and total payment processing volume by approximately one-third. The deal, pending
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MasterCard recently announced a new suite of authentication options for the online and mobile channel, branded MasterCard Identity Check, which will use various forms of biometrics and SMS one-time-passwords to authenticate card not present transactions. The service is expected to launch in the U.S. by mid-2016 with a global launch planned for the following year. MasterCard Identity
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According to a recent study by Javelin Strategy & Research, issuers left $118 billion on the table last year by wrongly declining payment card transactions for suspicion of fraud, known as an ‘insult’ or false positive. Nearly 60 percent of these issuer false positives occurred at the physical point-of-sale and about two-thirds were for transactions
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After announcing plans to take WorldPay public on the London Stock Exchange, Ingenico, Wirecard AG and a private equity consortium each made offers to acquire the business. French payment company and hardware manufacturer Ingenico even secured financing for a bid, rumored to be as much as £6.6 ($10.2) billion, but WorldPay turned down this and
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Following Visa Checkout and MasterPass, American Express launched their new Amex Express Checkout service in July, but doesn’t want it to be labeled a wallet. Cardholders that login to view or pay statements online can use the same user ID and password to submit payments online via PCs, mobile web browsers and mobile apps, and
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The Target data breach was the story of the 2013 holiday season and several other major retailers have failed to prevent the compromise of their customers’ payment and personally identifiable information since. With this in mind, it should not be too surprising that 45 percent of cardholders responded “definitely not” or “probably not” when asked
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October 2015 is the deadline for switching credit cards and readers to EMV/Chip & PIN technology in the US. At this point fraud liability switches to the party with the lesser technology, which will have substantial impact on unprepared merchants. The eCommerce channel must also get ready as stopping fraud at physical retail stores will
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