AmEx Tops at Hack The High Street Challenge

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Hack The High Street was hosted by Birdback, a card-linking and retail technology startup, in partnership with Vendorcom and was sponsored by American Express. Each retailer highlighted some of the latest innovations taking place within their verticals and some challenges they are facing as retailers with high street presence. These included topics around the importance of sustainability, improving customer experience in-store, improving click and collect and the retail experience as a whole. Following the keynotes 15 teams were formed, which worked tirelessly through the weekend to build their products from the ground up and present before a panel of judges. The team from American Express was awarded first place for its interactive advertising product that would work based on facial recognition and adjusted its content and message depending on the viewers’ physical distant from the advertisement.

Square Takes Out Stops on Merchant Limits

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Square has eliminated holds and deposit limits on manually entered transactions in the U.S. Funds from both swiped and non-swiped payments will be deposited in merchants’ bank accounts within 1-2 business days, a crucial advantage for local sellers who typically don’t take payments in person, such as caterers and contractors. The move is an important step to further remove barriers to growth for local businesses, and makes Square an industry leader in eliminating deposit limits and related holds for customers. Removing deposit limits and related holds is the latest step by Square to upend financial norms and make running and growing a business easier than ever for merchants.

iPayment Posts Flat 3Q/13 Processing Volume

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[ihc-hide-content ihc_mb_type=”show” ihc_mb_who=”0″ ihc_mb_template=”1″] iPayment posted a total 3Q/13 transaction processing volume of $5.6 billion, flat from the year ago period, and 87.1 million in transaction, up 0.5% from the year ago figure. Total revenues decreased by 0.5% to $167.8 million for the third quarter of 2013 from the year ago figure of $168.6 million,…

Fonetic Announces Dodd-Frank Biometrics Compliance Solution

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Fonetic integrated voice biometrics capabilities into its Dodd-Frank Trading Record Keeping Compliance Solution, offering the first solution provider to utilize voice biometrics to enhance bank compliance with Dodd-Frank Title VII mandates. Fonetic’s solution captures, indexes, analyzes and extracts relevant unstructured data from all voice, email and chat interactions to create a fully-searchable database of all communications pertaining to a bank’s traders and trades. By adding biometric voice analysis, Fonetic empowers banks to verify a caller’s identity, track their interactions, and authenticate transactions based on their unique voiceprint. With even the smallest voice sample, Fonetic can scan millions of calls and cross-match voiceprints with other known criteria – such as call content – to identify the caller. Once identified, the caller’s voice becomes searchable data that banks can use to facilitate regulatory inquiries or quickly identify inappropriate trading behaviors.

PayAnywhere Enhances mPOS App for Android

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PayAnywhere mPOS solutions made available its PayAnywhere 2.0 solution for Android and its “PayAnywhere Inside” online merchant portal. The app works with the free PayAnywhere mobile credit card reader, which plugs into the audio jack of a supported Android device, giving merchants a safe and simple way to accept credit and debit card payments directly from their Android phone or tablet. With the lowest rates in the industry – just 2.69% per swiped transaction, regardless of card type (Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express), and next day funding for merchants’ transactions, PayAnywhere is the payment industry’s preeminent business-grade, “pay-as-you-go” mPOS solution. Advancements to the improved solution include a simple sign on, a more dynamic user interface, cross-platform syncing and upgraded reporting.

ElectraCard Platform Announces Latest Payment Suite Upgrade

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ElectraCard Services (ECS) announced Acleda Bank upgraded to its electra iTx series payment suite. ECS played a very crucial role and provided ACLEDA Bank Plc. with a flexible and scalable platform that empowered them to expand and differentiate their offerings. The Bank anticipates their customer acquisition to double over the next five years, adding to their existing one million account holders. With the new payments processing system – electra iTx series, ACLEDA Bank Plc. will be able to rapidly expand its ATM network, start UPI, MasterCard and JCB issuance and acquiring along with existing VISA connectivity, and adding new delivery channels, BNAs and kiosks. The electra iTx series platform is a next generation PA-DSS certified secure transaction platform, built from the ground-up on open standards and industry best-practices to support a service oriented architecture (SOA) that is fast becoming the technology backbone of today’s leading organizations.

Equinox Payments Partners Infinite to Offer miOS Payment

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Equinox partnered with Infinite Peripherals mPOS devices to offer a mobile payment solution that is compatible with Apple iOS by integrating IPC’s Linea Pro™ for the iPod touch® or iPhone®, or the Infinea Tab® for the iPad®. Empowering Apple handheld devices with a barcode scanner and a magnetic stripe reader, both the Linea Pro and Infinea Tab work with custom software to create a mobile system for POS, as well as inventory management, asset tracking, ID verification and lead tracking. To date, IPC has deployed more than 300,000 of its mobile POS devices nationwide. IPC will be able to offer its customers remote key injection capabilities on its POS-related devices, utilizing the Equinox Remote Key Injection (RKI) platform and thereby maximizing convenience, efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

NFC and SIG Form Relationship

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The NFC Forum and the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding that will enable the two organizations to work more closely together, via a formal liaison relationship. The NFC Forum and the Bluetooth SIG have collaborated previously, most recently in the creation of a developers’ guide entitled “Bluetooth Secure Simple Pairing Using NFC,” which was jointly published as an Application Document available to the public. Under the new agreement, the two organizations will work together to update and maintain the Application Document to accommodate Bluetooth Smart products using the Low Energy feature of the Bluetooth specification.

MasterCard Joins Smart Cities Council

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Smart Cities coalition to advance smart city development and innovation partnered MasterCard for a turning point in the development of innovative digital transaction processing platforms for city government, businesses and citizens. MasterCard will work with the Council’s advisors and members to provide cities with better, safer and more secure payment methods. Technology has been the single largest change agent in the ongoing transformation of the finance function. Electronic payment processing has increased convenience, security and transparency, and has contributed to reduce administrative costs. MasterCard will also contribute to the Smart Cities Council Readiness Guide to improve the livability, workability and sustainability of the world’s cities. The Readiness Guide is a collaborative and comprehensive resource that provides a step-by-step roadmap, vendor-neutral technology recommendations, evaluations and case studies for smart city development.

Debit Card Spending Losing Footing on Credit Card Spending

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[ihc-hide-content ihc_mb_type=”show” ihc_mb_who=”0″ ihc_mb_template=”1″] Spending for goods and services on general purpose and private label consumer and commercial credit, debit, and prepaid cards reached $4.633 trillion in 2012, and is projected to reach $7.285 trillion by 2017. This indicates the more than 20-year trend that had debit card purchase volume and purchase transactions gaining share…

Elavon Promotes NA President From Within

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Elavon global payments provider promoted Guy Harris President, NA, to oversee operations in USA and Canada. Having joined Elavon in 2010 as Managing Director of Western, Central and Southern Europe (WCSE), Harris drove growth in Elavon’s WCSE region and led from the front employing a customer-centric approach. He previously was VP, Global Sales for Misys, a leading global supplier of IT solutions to the banking industry. While there, he delivered revenue through 5 regional sales heads – Europe, MEA, Americas, Asia and Strategic Accounts, and he transformed the sales team structure to increase productivity throughout the organisation. He brings 25 years of IT sales management experience to the role.