To explain today’s mergers and acquisitions in merchant acquiring, mix a hefty dose of technology and a dash of foreign spices with traditional flavors like greater scale. And don’t forget a little fear. For years, greater scale seemed to be the big driver of mergers and acquisitions in the merchant-acquiring …

Call it Newtonian market dynamics. Sir Isaac Newton propounded the physical law that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Now, in the suddenly vibrant market for person-to-person payments, we’re seeing an analogous reaction unfold. As our cover story on page 22 explains, financial institutions have made …

Young adults like loyalty programs even more than older consumers, and the so-called Millennial generation has its own preferences for types of loyalty programs and the form factors for connecting merchants and consumers, according to new research from Hawk Incentives. For example, as a group, respondents to a Hawk Incentives …

Online lender Kabbage Inc.’s ambition to enter payment processing by the end of the year, reported this week by Reuters, is a logical extension of their current platform, but one clouded by a host of uncertainties and rife with potential missteps, according to experts contacted by Digital Transactions News. Nine-year-old …

Tablet-based point-of-sale provider ShopKeep Inc. announced it is introducing an Android version of its ShopKeep Register app, which up to now has been available only for Apple Inc.’s iOS operating system. The app will be available first on Clover devices from First Data Corp., which launched it for Clover Mini earlier …

In its biggest acquisition yet, PayPal Holdings Inc. is buying Stockholm-based payments firm iZettle AB for $2.2 billion. The San Jose, Calif.-based online payments provider late Thursday confirmed an afternoon of rumors about the pending deal. Jacob de Geer, iZettle’s chief executive and co-founder, will stay on after the acquisition’s …

Retail ATM network owner and operator Cardtronics plc said Fifth Third Bank will place its brand on more than 800 Cardtronics ATMs at Speedway LLC convenience stores in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. In related news, Indiana-based German American Bank said it has joined Cardtronics plc’s Allpoint network, giving its customers access …

Visa Inc. is sponsoring a contest in which the winner will receive an international trip on which all expenses will be paid without using cash. Applicants must submit a short video by June 15. Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) has extended to 2022 an agreement with Minor League Baseball …

Since its official launch last June, Zelle has been all about carving out a healthy piece of the burgeoning person-to-person payments market for financial institutions. Now it’s promoting another service that leverages its network but could prove far more lucrative: disbursements. When companies, associations, or other organizations need to pay …

We list 37 entries this year, of which only three appeared in our original Guide nine years ago. This year’s Field Guide represents our 10th annual effort to catalog the broad currents in electronic payments by listing some of the more salient players providing alternatives to the big network brands. …