Competitive Strategies

Mastercard Inc. has called a halt to its bidding war with Visa Inc. over cross-border business-to-business payments processor Earthport PLC and instead plans to acquire another company in the space, Transfast Remittance LLC. Mastercard announced a tentative deal to buy New York City-based money-transfer provider Transfast Friday. Transfast is a …

EVO Payments Inc. continues its European expansion with the acquisition of Way2Pay, an Ireland-based payment gateway. Announced Monday, the deal gives the Melville, N.Y.-based company entry to integrated payments for schools and clubs in Ireland and the United Kingdom. Terms were not disclosed. “We see significant value in expanding Way2Pay …

Repay Holdings LLC said its 2018 payment volume increased 42% to $7.5 billion from $5.2 billion in 2017. Its net income increased 12% to $10.5 million from $9.4 million. Repay is in the midst of a pending merger with Thunder Bridge Acquisition Ltd. Net Element Inc. unit Unified Payments will …

Mastercard Inc. has abandoned its pursuit of cross-border specialist Earthport PLC and instead has agreed to acquire New York City-based Transfast Remittance LLC, a cross-border account-to-account money-transfer network. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close in 2019’s second half, were not disclosed. Visa Inc. last month made an …

American vacationers flock every year to the scenic islands of the Caribbean, and some day they might be using a digital version of the East Caribbean dollar to pay for a Rum Punch or Ting With a Sting. The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, the monetary authority for the eight-country Eastern …

Cardlytics Inc. continues to ramp up its rewards platform to accommodate an expected tens of millions of new users coming from new big-bank clients, but revenue growth will lag customer growth for some time, company executives signaled this week. Atlanta-based Cardlytics’s main product, Cardlytics Direct, provides merchant-funded offers to consumers …

Could the price of Bitcoin be headed back up into the stratosphere? One noted analyst is saying it’s a distinct possibility. Based on what he sees as recurring patterns in the cryptocurrency’s pricing history, Michael Graham says Bitcoin could be starting its upward climb now toward the neighborhood of $20,000, …

Observers of the U.S. payments market who have been expecting a surge in conversions to dual-interface cards may have been disappointed Wednesday morning as CPI Card Group Inc., one of the nation’s biggest card manufacturers, said it expects “dual interface to grow gradually as a proportion of the U.S. market” …

Payments provider Payroc LLC announced it acquired Detrok Technology Services, a developer of technology for point-of-sale, payment, and other functions in the hospitality industry. Terms were not disclosed. Payments provider Powertranz said it and NCR Corp. integrated the Powertranz software development kit and payment gateway into the NCR Aloha point-of-sale …

Criminals figured out in 2018 how to really frustrate retailers. They automated their bots to create high-volume attacks against online merchants, finds the ThreatMetrix Cybercrime Report: H2 2018. Released Tuesday by ThreatMetrix, an anti-fraud company purchased by LexisNexis Risk Solutions last year, the report finds there were 5.5 billion bot …