Credit card issuers continue to reduce credit limits and close accounts at an elevated rate. A recent large sample survey found that nearly a third of all Americans were affected by limit decreases or closures in the first four months of 2021: 61M people! That reduction/closure...
Tom Bremner, our Head of Payment Processing Division, was interviewed this week for the Homebuilders Association Vancouver (HAVAN) Spotlight: Tell us about yourself & your company? Tom: I’ve been a salesman all my life. I was the kid who found your lost golf balls and sold them...
As much as ecommerce sales volume has risen over the past 15 months, a number of studies show that the channel's fraud rates have grown even more quickly. There are an awful lot of security tools available, so I'm only including 4 lesser-known options here. But...
Cross-border ecommerce sales continue to boom for Canadian merchants with certain industries experiencing smoking hot demand. A recent Discover survey reveals that international shoppers are focused on Canada's precious stones/metals, jewelry, electronics, sporting goods, and courier and boat rental verticals. For those hoping to participate in...
Visa has recently announced that they now have more than 700 tap-to-pay transit projects at various levels of deployment. And that they've been keeping a close eye on contactless transaction volume for the 450+ projects that have already been completed. The data shows that ridership...
Merchants will see a nice reduction in MasterCard processing fees beginning in August. The rate rollbacks will affect some of the most popular card types but only when those cards are processed via eCommerce or manually entered transactions. Rates on payments processed through physical terminals...
Over the past year I've watched my favourite restaurants go from shut-down to dine-in to takeout only and back again as local COVID infection rates have flattened and spiked. I want to support these businesses as long as I'm not endangering anyone. That's why I'm excited...
Major POS terminal manufacturer Ingenico is anticipating supply disruptions due a worldwide semiconductor shortage. A notice was recently sent out to the credit card processing industry warning of delayed delivery for a number of terminal types, including the hugely popular Tetra Smart line. It will take...
At a time when contactless payments are seeing an understandable surge, Amazon is expanding the use of their biometric contactless technology "Amazon One". Here's how the process works: You scan your palm print and connect a credit card to the profile you've just created. From that...
Cryptocurrency Exchange CoinBase held their IPO last week and by the end of the first day of trading became America's most valuable financial exchange with a market cap of $85.8B. To put this number into context let's look at two of the world's largest markets. For...