Enable transactions for v1.3x

As Robert indicated in #796 there's no reason for this not to be enabled so this PR does just that.

| Q             | A
| ------------- | ---
| Bug fix?      | no
| New feature?  | no
| BC breaks?    | no
| Deprecations? | no
| Tests pass?   | yes
| Fixed tickets | #796
| Refs tickets  | 
| License       | MIT
| Doc PR        |