Mastercard has agreed to purchase a controlling stake in VocalLink, the payments processor that handles most payroll and household bill processing in the UK. The American payment giant will be paying up to $1.14 billion. Fortune reports: According to MasterCard MA, the deal would create "the first true combination of the traditional person-to-merchant cards business with a clearing business." That is, of course, presuming it clears regulatory scrutiny. VocaLink runs Link, the network that provides interoperability between British ATMs, as well as BACS, the clearing house for payments between bank accounts, and Faster Payments, the inter-bank transfer system for Internet and telephone-based payments.FastCompany explains what this could mean for MasterCard users.

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TidBITS publisher Adam Engst made one of his occasional appearances on the TWiT show MacBreak Weekly, joining hosts Leo Laporte and Andy Ihnatko, and developer Daniel Jalkut. After a wide-ranging discussion of issues with Apple’s online stores, the group talked about Apple’s Planet of the Apps reality show, Eddy Cue’s claims that Hollywood has nothing to fear from Apple, and Apple’s new music royalty rate proposal, which sounds like a flat tax designed to hurt Spotify. Well worth a listen!

 

Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

TidBITS publisher Adam Engst made one of his occasional appearances on the TWiT show MacBreak Weekly, joining hosts Leo Laporte and Andy Ihnatko, and developer Daniel Jalkut. After a wide-ranging discussion of issues with Apple’s online stores, the group talked about Apple’s Planet of the Apps reality show, Eddy Cue’s claims that Hollywood has nothing to fear from Apple, and Apple’s new music royalty rate proposal, which sounds like a flat tax designed to hurt Spotify. Well worth a listen!

 

Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

An anonymous reader writes: Apple has confirmed to TechCrunch that Pokemon Go has attracted more downloads in the App Store during its first week than any other app in App Store history. What's even more surprisingly is that the app was only available in a few countries at the time -- it initially launched in New Zealand, Australia and the U.S. Apple didn't provide the number of downloads, but one can assume it's well into the millions. Pokemon Go is expected to become even more popular as it becomes available in more countries -- the game just launched in Japan today. With millions of downloads in the first week alone, Pokemon Go is expected to generate large sums of money for Apple. The Guardian is reporting that Apple will "rake in $3 billion in revenue from Pokemon Go in the next one to two years as gamers buy 'PokeCoins' from its app store."

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