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Welcome to the new PaymentsSource Morning Briefing, delivered daily with the information you need to start your day, including top headlines from PaymentsSource and around the Web. In today's briefing:
E-commerce a silver lining at Target: Target's quarterly earnings showed a year over year decline in total sales, but there was one bright spot — the chain's e-commerce and omnichannel strategies are paying off. Online sales grew 26% year over year, totalling $560 million in the third quarter, Business Insider reports. That's up from the second quarter's yearly growth rate of 16% and ahead of Walmart, which reported 12% growth in online sales in the second quarter. That compares to an overall drop in total sales of 7% in the third quarter for Target. While digital's growing fast, it's still a small portion of Target's business — about 3.5% of its third quarter sales came from digital channels. To build its momentum, Target said it's focused on omnichannel fulfillment for the holiday shopping season, anticipating "click and collect" volume will grow 50% over 2015.
Target Corp. signage is seen on a shopping cart and the exterior of a company store in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., on Monday, May 16, 2016. Target is scheduled to release earnings figured on May 18. Photographer: Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg
Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg
Instagram shopping takes a shot at Pinterest: Instagram recently began supporting shopping tags, which allow users to buy products they see in their feed. Engadget reports users can tap a "to view" button on an image to learn more about an item. When ready to buy, companies have an option to send consumers to their website or app to complete the checkout process. It's a limited feature; only about 20 fashion brands are participating, including as Kate Spade, Warby Parker and JackThreads; and it is viewable only by iOS users in the U.S. But Instagram hopes to add retailers and markets, and add features such as the ability to bookmark products, a move that would make the service a more formidable threat to Pinterest, Engadget reports.
Uber's digital gift strategy: The ride sharing app Uber's become a brand for disruption, particularly for payment companies that hope to emulate the app's easy transaction experience, drawing collaboration with Facebook , Amex, Visa and others. Increasingly, the app's dabbling in payments, debuting a debit card in Mexico and now, a digital gift card. Uber's digital gift cards, which can be accessed by entering a code into the app, can be used for rides and UberEATS orders. The company is positioning the cards for common use cases, such as for use at restaurants or as an employee incentive to offset community costs or as a "thank you.".
A payment network for pot: Legalized marijuana scored big this election day, with nine states voting to legalize cannabis. Despite the results, most banks are still reluctant to do business with the pot industry, leaving it open to alternative providers. One of these providers, CanPay, is trying to make it easier for marijuana retailers to accept debit payments by using a multi-state network of the few financial institutions that support pot payments, making it easier to find a financial provider where there may not be one locally, reports Finextra. Consumers download the CanPay app from the company's website, create an account and link their checking account. They then pay at a retailer using non-identifiable, single-use and random payment tokens.
Hispanic Millennials Move To Mobile Payment MediaPost • Karla Fernandez Parker There has been a lot of talk about Millennials embracing mobile payment. Last month, Chuck Martin published an article in MediaPost's "MobileShopTalk" about consumers being slow to adopt mobile wallet use.
The Coffee Bean introduces mobile rewards app in competitive move Mobile Commerce Daily • Danny Parisi The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, a coffee and tea specialty retailer, is taking a step towards mobile integration with the release of its new mobile rewards application.
Elavon's staggering EMV progress will still fall short of 100% While around 70% of U.S. merchant locations still aren’t ready to handle EMV card transactions, Atlanta-based merchant acquirer Elavon, a unit of U.S. Bank, can tell the opposite story: 70% of its merchant clients will be EMV-enabled by the end of this year.
'Smart cities' need bank-driven payments data The smart city is not a new concept, but it is a new capability. In essence, smart cities are enhanced spaces that can quickly, flexibly, and intelligently evolve to meet the needs of the people using them.
Mastercard expands ‘Selfie Pay’ to Asia Mastercard will launch its “selfie pay” system in the Asia-Pacific region next year, expanding the global reach of its biometric identity-verification service for online payments to more markets as part of a gradual worldwide rollout.
The regulator and conservator of two influential loan buyers with government ties is considering digital currency's increased use in qualifying borrowers.
The Texas attorney general has accused WEX Bank of "debanking" a firearm supplier, but the Maine-based bank said it does not discriminate against any industry.
Der Spiegel and other European publications say the company continued to serve porn sites and money launderers even after regulators cracked down on it.
Regulators proposed a rule to replace the 2% enhanced supplementary leverage ratio with a capital charge equal to half of a bank's global systemically important bank surcharge. Low-risk assets will continue to count toward leverage requirements under the proposal.
