Enjoy complimentary access to top ideas and insights — selected by our editors.
Welcome to the new PaymentsSource Morning Briefing, delivered daily. The information you need to start your day, including top headlines from PaymentsSource and around the Web:
Visa and Walmart end their feud in Canada: Walmart will begin accepting Visa cards in Canada today, following a dispute between the two companies, according to a statement from Walmart. The retailer’s statement was brief, and did not reveal terms of any new deal between Walmart and Visa. Walmart stopped accepting Visa cards in Canada in 2016, starting in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and then extending the ban across the country later in the year, contending Visa was charging too much for transactions. The ban was part of a broader squabble over fee negotiations as both companies build out their own mobile payment applications.
A Wal-Mart Stores Inc. location stands in Brasilia, Brazil, on Friday, Jan. 15, 2016. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to close 269 stores, including its experimental small-format Express outlets, in a push to streamline the chain that will affect 16,000 jobs. The effort includes the closing of 60 money-losing stores in Brazil, a country where Wal-Mart has struggled. Photographer: Lula Marques/Bloomberg
Lula Marques/Bloomberg
Amazon writes another retail page: Fresh of off the buzz from its "no checkout" concept store, Amazon is expanding what's perhaps its most ironic attempt to disrupt tradition retail. ReCode reports Amazon will open a bookstore in the Time Warner Center, near Central Park. The store, which will open at some point in 2017, will join retailers in the Time Warner Center's mall, such as J. Crew, Diesel and Microsoft. It won't be joining Borders, which once operated a bookstore in the upscale mall but no longer does. The Amazon store won't be entirely an old-school bookstore. While it will include bestsellers from Amazon's e-commerce book site, it will also showcase Amazon's new gadgetry, including Echo, which has attracted banks that are interested in financial uses for voice technology. Amazon already has a bookstore in Seattle, and ReCode reports Amazon also plans to open bookstores in Boston and Chicago.
Salesforce stakes a claim in e-commerce:Salesforce is already collaborating with other technology companies to enable transaction processing software, and it's now taking a stake in e-commerce. VentureBeat reports Salesforce Ventures, Salesforce's corporate investment unit, is part of a $20 million investment round in CloudCraze, an e-commerce startup that integrates into SalesForce's cloud service. CloudCraze sells technology that connects buyers and sellers across different digital channels, and touts a client list that includes Coke, GE and Kellogg's. Salesforce has been active on the investment front in e-commerce, recently acquiring Demandware, one of CloudCraze's competitors.
U.K. ATMs are busier than ever: While British competition watchdogs pressure ATM mergers, a robust picture of the country's ATM market is emerging. Finextra reports the holiday season was the busiest period ever for cash machines on the Link network, as nearly $1 billion was withdrawn over the holiday week. Link said more than $150 million was withdrawn on Dec. 24 alone. And people withdrew about $16 billion from 70,000 Link ATMs in December, an increase of 3.5% over December 2015. The U.K. government is pressuring Mastercard to address competitive issues related to its acquisition of VocaLink, which supplies the software that runs Link ATMs.
Tesco's sequel may be worse: The large data breach at the bank operated by the U.K. retail chain Tesco in late 2016 may be just the start, according to Richard Benham, chairman of the National Cyber Management Centre, the BBC reports. Drawing on the recent trend of hacks ranging from retailers to the U.S. presidential election, Benham suggests web criminals are gaining the upper hand and predicts a bank attack in the near future that will be large enough to cause the bank to fail due to a loss of confidence and a "run" on that bank. The BBC also cites research from Trend Micro that predicts a growth in ransomware due to crooks renting out technology that breaks into computer systems, encrypts data, then demands payment to decrypt it. Distributed denial of service attacks, which can overwhelm banking systems, are also expected to spike in the coming year, according to the BBC.
Paytm mobile wallet transactions hit 1 billion in 2016 Mobile World Live • Chris Donkin Indian mobile wallet provider Paytm recorded one billion transactions across its user-base of 177 million customers ... The post Paytm mobile wallet transactions hit 1 billion in 2016 appeared first on Mobile World Live.
Why is the U.K. throwing up roadblocks for ATM deals? When Diebold wrapped up its $1.8 billion Wincor Nixdorf acquisition last August, there was one asterisk on the deal: The U.K. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA)—which this week threw a flag on Mastercard’s proposed acquisition of VocaLink—wanted to explore whether the ATM network giants’ merger stifled local competition.
Many EMV roadblocks remain out of merchants' control Prior to the October 2015 EMV chip-card liability shift in the U.S., various merchant groups expressed concerns about factors that would keep them from meeting that deadline — some of which remain beyond their control.
Cincinnati-based First Financial scooped up Westfield Bank near Cleveland after Westfield's parent company decided to exit the bank space and focus on its core insurance business.
Since the end of COVID, each bank has set its own rules for how often employees need to show up at the office. Here's how a dozen lenders are handling the shift.
A number of fintechs emerged amid the COVID-19 pandemic as a flurry of Paycheck Protection Program loan applications inundated banks. Now, the government is alleging many of them facilitated or committed fraud.
The card network's moves include supporting coins from Fiserv, PayPal and others; and offering services to what's expected to be a fast-growing industry.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell testified in the House Tuesday on the heels of yet another pointed social media post from President Donald Trump. But House Republicans largely avoided landing political blows against the central bank chair.
