6.28.17: Your morning briefing

Enjoy complimentary access to top ideas and insights — selected by our editors.
Want unlimited access to top ideas and insights? Subscribe Now

Welcome to the PaymentsSource Morning Briefing, delivered daily. The information you need to start your day, including top headlines from PaymentsSource and around the Web:

Square loans: Square CEO Jack Dorsey is spreading feelers among the company's small to midsized business clients that it's interested in extending credit to consumers, reports The Wall Street Journal. The move would extend Square into lending beyond its existing Square Capital program, in which merchants gain upfront capital and pay back the loans from future payments via Square. Square could use consumer lending to deepen its ties to merchants by enabling an additional service through stores, furthering its product diversification to improve merchant acquiring. It would also give Square an additional income stream as it tries to boost revenues from sources other than its traditional business of collecting transaction fees for mobile point of sale payments. Square has mostly focused on merchant services over the past few years, though it has floated more consumer oriented products as of late, including a potential debit card, which could be a gateway to broader financial services.

Jin Lee/Bloomberg

Golden anniversary: The mobile revolution is bringing lots of changes to ATMs, which is not surprising given the cash machine has been around for a half century. The 50th anniversary of the ATM was Tuesday, and Barclays recognized the occasion by painting a London ATM in an original cash machine location gold. The machine developed out of consumer frustration with not being able to access money outside of bank branch hours, combined with the concept of a self-serve chocolate dispenser, according to Barclays, which adds the concept of a PIN to identify users came from military serial numbers. Barclays often aggressively pursues new transactional technology, such as outfitting wearable computing with payments, but its homage to ATMs is more than a soft spot. There are still more than 70,000 ATMs in the U.K., with each dispensing an average of about $3 million per year.

Ramsonware's own pain point: The cybercrooks behind the Petya ransomware have run into a snag. A German email provider blocked the email account that was managing demands, and the attackers probably can't decrypt the system, reports The Verge. Petya's collection system is unusual for Ransomware, which usually creates a distinct digital wallet for each infection, according to The Verge. In Petya's case, the attackers set up a bitcoin wallet with an identifier to confirm payment and receive decryption keys. But Posteo, a Berlin-based email company, blocked the address, preventing the attackers from reading or responding to messages. At deadline it was still unclear how successful the Petya ransomware was, though shipping company Maersk and advertising agency WPP reported infections, and the Kiev metro was temporarily unable to accept card payments.

Two factor Pinterest: Like Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest is also pursuing a combination of social networking and payments in the same user experience. To give its security a boost, Pinterest is adopting two factor authentication, a staple of many e-commerce sites and digital payments technologies. Pinterest will introduce two factor authentication over the next few weeks, enabling users to access a code via text message or through Twilio's authy app. Users can then add the code to the account settings on the web, which will prompt a code to log in from any connected device. Logins from new devices or locations will produce an email prompt from Pinterest to the user.

From the Web

Judge rules for Western Union's Speedpay in lawsuit over fees
Reuters | Tue Jun 27, 2017 - A federal judge in West Palm Beach has tossed a proposed class action alleging that Western Union's Speedpay, an electronic bill payment service, collected millions of dollars in fees from Florida consumers without being licensed to do so. Speedpay did not need a license to operate as a money transmitter because it did not receive consumers' money and thus was not subject to licensing requirements under a Florida law on money services businesses, U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra ruled on Tuesday.

Alibaba Spending $1 Billion to Raise Stake in Southeast Asia's Lazada
The New York Times | Wed Jun 28, 2017 - Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd will invest an additional $1 billion in Southeast Asian online retailer Lazada Group, boosting its stake by nearly a third to 83 percent, the two companies said in a joint statement. The move doubles Alibaba's investment in the firm after last year's deal to buy a controlling stake in Lazada for about $1 billion.

Everything to Know About The Latest Worldwide Ransomware Attack
Fortune | Tue Jun 27, 2017 - Meet the sequel to WannaCry, the wide-ranging ransomware attack that crippled businesses around the globe last month. On Tuesday, another widespread ransomware attack began halting unprepared businesses in their tracks. The new attack uses the same method of propagation as WannaCry: A leaked hacking tool called Eternal Blue, which has been linked to the U.S. National Security Agency. One of the major differences between the two attacks is that the most recent event does not yet appear to be susceptible to a hardcoded "kill switch." That means it may prove harder to overcome.

More from PaymentsSource

Visa’s Klarna stake allows banks to counter alternative POS credit
Instant financing for online purchases has seen rapid growth in the past few years, with

Same-day ACH requires processing precision that eludes most companies
Beginning September 15, same day ACH Debits will become a reality for financial institutions, payments providers, businesses, and consumers. Despite this looming transition, the majority of organizations are not prepared for offering this new service to their customers.

Google's relatively small EU fine portends bigger changes for payments
The European Commission ruling this morning on Google’s “illegal conduct” of preferential placement for its own Product Listing Ads (PLAs) has far reaching implications.

Mastercard rolls out pack of APIs for QR code use cases
Mastercard wants to make it easier for banks, merchants and other third parties to use its payments technology on new platforms through a set of new APIs it’s releasing that address use cases ranging from mobile and chatbot payments to consumer spending controls.