PayPal and Visa announced several new initiatives as part of a partnership deal aimed at thawing their historically frosty relationship. PayPal will de-emphasize its focus on steering customers to bank transfers instead of Visa cards to fund transactions, integrate Visa's mobile payments platform, provide more transaction data to card issuers, and allow Visa's debit cardholders [...]
Microsoft's launch of its Wallet 2.0 is a bit like someone who shows up at the party after midnight. Apple Pay has been around since 2014 and Android Pay is nearly a year old. Microsoft is touting the fact that the new version supports NFC "tap to pay" (as if that is a major [...]
This article from Huffington Post tells a fascinating story about farmers in small Ugandan villages embracing digit wallets as a replacement for cash boxes and paper records to manage their community savings and lending groups. Benefits go beyond safety and efficiency... there is also greater transparency and access to bankers and other institutions who can provide access to other resources. [...]
Apple Pay is rolling out support for Visa, Mastercard and Interac accounts issued by seven Canadian banks, including giants BMO and the Royal Bank of Canada (both of whom already offered their own digital payment apps). Since the launch of Apple Pay in Canada late last year, only American Express cards had been supported. The service is available to [...]
The tide is turning on the time-honored process of presenting a payment card at the point of sale. MasterCard predicts that 38% of EU payment transactions by 2020 will be digital, meaning they originated on a tokenized device such as a mobile phone or wearable rather than the presentment of a payment card. MasterCard's MDES platform also [...]
