RBR, Festy, Paypal and Visa in cards and payments

by | Jul 21, 2017 | Payments

  • RBR has reported that the number of payment cards worldwide increased by 8% to 14bn in 2016. According to RBR’s Global Payment Cards Data and Forecasts to 2022, UnionPay, Visa and Mastercard accounted for 80% of all cards in 2016. UnionPay increased its share of cards to 43%, extending its lead
  • Festy has launched a wristband that allows festival-goers to make contactless payments in Dash. Users add the Dash currency to their QR code and NFC-integrated wristband and then use it to pay for food and drinks at POS terminals where Visa contactless is accepted as well as on phones with NFC tags.
  • PayPal has introduced PayPal Global Sellers, a cross-border trade service for SMEs in the US.
  • PayPal and Apple have announced that PayPal is now in the iTunes, App Store or Apple Music payments menu for transactions made on an iPhone, iPad or iPod
  • Visa’s plans to incentivise retailers to stop accepting cash payments in the US has been criticised by UK consumer groups, including Which? which has said that ‘businesses should be led by how their customers want to pay, and not by the incentives offered by card firms’. James Daley, director of Fairer Finance, equated the move to bribery, while the Federation of Small Businesses said it would make businesses unattractive to tourists who use cash and was ‘impractical’ for rural areas with slow broadband
  • Visa has launched the Visa Cashless Challenge in a bid to encourage US businesses to go cashless. As part of the initiative, it will be awarding up to $500,000 to 50 eligible US-based small business food service owners who commit to joining the 100% cashless quest. Visa will also tap into its sponsorship as the official payment partner of Formula E to offer cashless, digital payment acceptance at the first-ever Formula E race in Brooklyn, the New York City ePrix