ANNOUNCEMENTSAcapture, a subsidiary of Payvision, joined the Merchant Risk Council's member community of 450 companies from over 30 countries. The MRC supports safe ecommerce and risk management initiatives worldwide. With Acapture joining the MRC community, merchant members will have access to Acapture's data-driven payment solutions designed to improve authorization rates and reduce fraud, as well as company-sponsored research, the MRC noted.
First American Payment Systems L.P. was honored with the ATSI Call Center Award of Distinction for the fifth consecutive year by the Association of TeleServices International. "Our customers are of the utmost importance to us, and this award reinforces our efforts in providing exceptional customer service 24/7/365," said Latiffa Sharpe, Vice President of Merchant Services for FAPS.
In follow up to the 2013 Money Now Funding court determination, the Federal Trade Commission charged 12 defendants – an ISO, sales agents and their principals – with laundering millions of dollars in credit card charges through fraudulent merchant accounts. According to the complaint filed by the FTC, the defendants arranged for a deceptive operation to obtain and maintain merchant accounts that allowed it to process almost $6 million through the credit card networks.
Michael "Mike" Gianoni, President and Chief Executive Officer of Blackbaud Inc., was named to the list of Top 50 SaaS CEOs by The SaaS Report. Gianoni was recognized alongside CEOs from software companies such as HubSpot, Slack, Salesforce, Gainsight, Box, Workday and others. The CEOs on this year's list were selected based on five primary factors: company growth, work culture, product technology, financial performance and professional experience.
Mobile identity scoring company Juvo Mobile Inc. completed a $40 million Series B funding round led by New Enterprise Associates and Wing Venture Capital. Also included in the round were investments from SignalFire, as well as add-on investments from existing investors. Juvo said it plans to leverage the funds to drive global growth and scale, and broaden its suite of financial service offerings for the financially excluded.
After a two-year investigation, a federal grand jury returned a six-count indictment against Marcus Hutchins for his alleged role in creating and distributing the Kronos banking Trojan. Hutchins, a citizen and resident of the United Kingdom, was arrested in the United States on Aug. 2, 2017. He faces multiple charges related to computer fraud, electronic communication interception and unauthorized computer access.
Kabbage Inc. entered a $250 million equity investment agreement with a subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp, which it said represents the largest equity raise in the online small-business lending segment to date. The funding brings Kabbage's total equity raised to nearly $500 million. Kabbage plans to use the capital to expand its lending products for small businesses, explore nonlending products and services, and accelerate its small to midsize business (SMB) lending.
Payment Alliance International was honored for the third consecutive year by Louisville Business First as a Best Places to Work in Greater Louisville award winner. "We have an outstanding team of dedicated employees, all working to serve our clients and make our business better," said John J. Leehy III, President and CEO of PAI. Honorees were determined by an assessment of workplace policies, office conditions, management styles and employee surveys.
Hamburg, Germany-based Risk Ident expanded its global operations by opening a U.S. office at the Cambridge Innovation Center near Boston. According to the company, the expansion will enable it to work with large U.S. ecommerce enterprise customers to identify and prevent online fraud in multiple risk vectors, including payment fraud, account takeover and identity theft.
Silicon Valley Bank and First Data Corp. selected four startups to participate in Class 6 of Commerce.Innovated, an accelerator program designed to help commerce, payments and fintech companies grow their businesses. The four-month virtual program will provide participants with operational mentorship from SVB, First Data and their respective networks. The four companies selected to participate are Apostrophe, Blueprint Registry, Finix and Headnote.
Digital identity verification predictive analytics firm Socure closed a $13.9 million Series B funding round led by Commerce Ventures, with participation from Flint Capital, Work-Bench, Santander InnoVentures and Two Sigma Ventures L.P., among others. This latest round brings total funding of $27.5 million to date and will enable Socure to scale sales and support operations, build out its infrastructure and drive market expansion, the company said.
Trulioo's flagship identity verification solution, GlobalGateway, ranked first for the second year running in the Verification/Identity Checks category of the 2017 RegTech Performance Report, published by Market Fintech Ltd. Trulioo and GlobalGateway also placed fourth in the Overall Supplier Rankings. The report focuses on regulatory technology solutions gaining market traction, institutions deploying them, scope of solutions and compliance areas addressed.
Retail fintech company Vyze closed $13.1 million in Series C venture capital financing. The round was led by Austin Ventures with additional investments from Fathom Capital and Starvest Partners. Vyze also welcomed Ken DeAngelis, co-founder and General Partner at Austin Ventures, to the Vyze Board of Directors. The funding will be used to accelerate growth and fuel product innovation and expansion.
RESEARCHAccording to a report from Bluecore titled A New Path for Retail: Co-Existing with the Force of Amazon, 44 percent of retailers still do not know how to respond to the power of Amazon while others grapple with free shipping, email communications and better access to customer data. In the report, Bluecore underscores several ways merchants can embrace market potential and overcome challenges by using Amazon as a distribution channel.
CO-OP Financial Services released Digital Transformation, a study designed to help credit union leaders understand current industry perceptions, challenges and plans for the digital age. Leaders were queried on five strategic areas – consumers, competition, data, innovation and value – and asked to identify barriers to change. In the study, digital transformation was supported by 88 percent of the respondent group, 73 percent confirmed plans to expand digital budgets, gold standard digital brands were identified, and top barriers to digital transformation were cited.
According to KPMG LLP's Q2 2017 Pulse of Fintech report, overall fintech funding in the United States grew to $2 billion across 129 deals during the second quarter, up $500 million from the previous quarter. KPMG analyses indicated a U.S. investor shift to business-to-business (B2B) funding focused on improving cost efficiencies of mid- and back-office functions. Four of the top 10 deals in the second quarter were forged in the B2B market, rather than customer facing initiatives, KPMG noted.
PARTNERSHIPS3dcart implemented Apple Pay as a payment gateway for 3dcart stores as part of its recent platform upgrade. The integration was in direct response to merchant interest in the addition of Apple Pay as a checkout option. "We decided the integration would be a great benefit to both our customers and their customers as well," said Jimmy Rodriguez, Chief Operating Officer at 3dcart.
American Express Co. and MineralTree, an accounts payable (AP) and payment automation solution provider, created an integrated solution that brings efficiency to everyday AP processes. The partnership provides organizations with a platform that incorporates AmEx corporate card activities with normal AP workflows to help streamline supplier payment processes, the companies stated.
U.S. shoppers will soon be able to purchase lottery game tickets, such as Powerball and Mega Millions, at grocery retail checkouts and have entry numbers sent to their mobile device. The innovation is the result of a collaboration between lottery technology provider Linq3 and Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. The program, which is subject to individual state lottery approval, is expected be available in select states at participating grocers starting in late 2017.
Central Payment divulged that CPAY, a joint venture with Total System Services Inc., will offer CardFlight Inc.'s SwipeSimple mobile POS solution, enabling merchants to accept EMV (Europay, Mastercard and Visa) chip card payments from their mobile devices. The solution includes an EMV chip card reader, mobile application for iOS and Android, and a back-office web dashboard for merchants to accept payments and manage their businesses.
ExaDigm Inc., in partnership with SoftPoint LLC, launched All-in-One (AIO), a POS terminal that features ExaDigm hardware embedded with SoftPoint software. "SoftPoint and ExaDigm collaborated to create a product called Integrator, a middleware solution that allows a caller to initiate the terminal," said Angela Grimes, Vice President of Sales at ExaDigm. "Then, the integrator can manage a customer payment and interconnection to a processor or gateway."
Flywire Corp. and Volvo Car USA LLC agreed to support international receivables for Volvo's U.S. sales organization, including a new program that enables international students to lease and pay for vehicles, using preferred payment methods, while studying in the United States. "Our goal is to make life less complicated for our customers and Flywire helps us do that for international students," said Rick Bryant, Vice President of Sales Operations for Volvo Car USA.
GlobalOnePay, a division of Pivotal Payments Inc., partnered with InvoiceASAP Inc. to enable payment acceptance through a one-click onboarding process. InvoiceASAP will also leverage GlobalOnePay's payment facilitator technology to aide electronic invoicing for the SMB market. As a result, U.S. and Canadian business owners will now be able to implement credit card processing within InvoiceASAP's mobile app or on a desktop web dashboard, the partners said.
InAuth Inc. and AimBrain Solutions Ltd. agreed to strategically collaborate to help banks and financial institutions, digital wallet providers, payment service providers and others deliver up to six-factor mobile transaction authentication by deploying InAuth's mobile device authentication technology in combination with AimBrain's facial, voice and behavioral biometric technologies.
Integrity Payment Systems' fundraising program, Integrity's Gift, partnered with Operation First Response, a nonprofit that provides emergency financial assistance to wounded and disabled veterans. Through Integrity's Gift, businesses processing with Integrity can elect to participate in supporting Operation First Response at no additional cost. Integrity said it will match the businesses' credit card processing rates and donate 35 percent of its own net revenue to the cause.
MagTek Inc. entered a technology partnership with TRAY, an enterprise POS and mobile ordering provider for restaurants and retailers, whereby TRAY will deploy MagTek's Magensa Payment Protection Gateway to securely parse, pack and send data for processing. "We are excited to work with MagTek because its technology is known in the industry for its reliability," said Peter Kellis, founder and CEO of TRAY.
National Merchants Association LLC partnered with Phoenix Managed Networks to integrate the PhoeniXGate multichannel gateway, which will allow independent software vendors to develop on NMA's infrastructure, the company noted. "We've doubled our development team this year, and I'm spending a large part of my time in Silicon Valley building relationships with up-and-coming businesses that can leverage payments innovation to create massive new markets," said Jason Holderness, Chief Technology Officer at NMA.
Shopgate Inc. partnered with ReCharge in developing a program designed to help drive repeat business purchases, increase customer loyalty and grow retention rates for merchants. In addition to using Shopgate's fully customizable native iOS and Android shopping apps, retailers are now able to integrate ReCharge's recurring billing and subscription portal into Shopgate's mobile platform to manage recurring payments in one location.
Wirecard AG expanded its partnership with shop system developer Gambio GmbH, together launching the GambioPay payment solution. Gambio offers subject matter experts end-to-end ecommerce solutions for online shops. For this product, Wirecard will provide payment processing as well as risk management, giving GambioPay merchants single source access to payment methods relevant to their business via the Wirecard Checkout Portal in GambioPay.
ACQUISITIONSAccenture acquired Search Technologies, an enterprise search and big data analytics solutions provider. Search Technologies joins the existing community of data scientists and engineers within Accenture Analytics and will focus on developing and industrializing solutions that make unstructured content easily searchable to support data discovery, analytics and large-scale reporting, the company stated.
Fleetcor Technologies Inc. closed its acquisition of Cambridge Global Payments for approximately $690 million. The acquisition of Cambridge provides Fleetcor with entry into the estimated $145 billion B2B cross-border payments market. According to Fleetcor, the addition of Cambridge's global corporate payments capabilities will enable both domestic and international AP payments for the same client, a significant differentiator in the commercial marketplace.
Global Payments Inc. agreed to acquire the communities and sports divisions of Active Network from Vista Equity Partners. Active Network delivers cloud-based, mission critical enterprise software, including payment technology solutions, to event organizers in the communities and health and fitness verticals. The outdoors division will be retained by Vista Equity Partners.
The boards of directors for Vantiv Inc. and Worldpay Group plc reached agreement on the terms of a recommended merger. Worldpay shareholder values have been determined, along with expected dividend amounts. Vantiv and Worldpay shareholders are expected to own approximately 57 percent and 43 percent, respectively, upon closing. The combined company is expected to have an enterprise value of $28.8 billion and will be named Worldpay.
APPOINTMENTSShopkick Inc. welcomed Rohan Chandran as its Senior Vice President of Product Management. With over 15 years in management, Chandran’s background includes time at YP leading consumer product, building a data and analytics team at Telenav and creating a patented business model at Experian Interactive. Chandran has also led product teams for Yahoo and Technorati, and co-founded Cricinfo, which was acquired by ESPN.
ID.me Inc. appointed Julie Filion as Chief Marketing Officer. Filion will lead ID.me's marketing strategy, customer insights and affiliate program. Filion joins ID.me from MoneyGram International Inc., where she served as Vice President and Head of Ecommerce and Digital Marketing, leading company growth and customer acquisition initiatives. Her professional experience also includes tenures with Amazon, PepsiCo and the Monitor Group.
BlueCart Inc. added four members to its management team. Bill Mallek joins as Vice President of Sales, Kris McKee as Product Manager, Glenn Yamasaki as Head of Talent and Human Resources, and Daniel Lewis as Sales Development Representative Manager. This group will be responsible for growth of BlueCart's web and mobile wholesale procurement platform. 
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