- American Express Co. reported first-quarter U.S. card-billed business of $195.5 billion, up 7% year-over-year. International volume slipped 1% to $100.2 billion, bringing AmEx’s total billed business to $295.7 billion, a 4% increase from $283.8 billion a year earlier. Discount revenue rose 5% to $6.2 billion. AmEx said its average worldwide discount rate was 2.37% of the sale, unchanged from 2018’s first quarter.
- Consumer awareness of peer-to-peer payments stands at 81%, up 8% from last year, and almost one-third would use a mobile wallet that automatically chooses a card for any given purchase based on the user’s payment preferences. That’s among the results of Total System Services Inc.’s annual consumer payment study, which canvassed 1,200 U.S. citizens.
- Visa Inc. said Toronto-based Wave Financial Inc., provider of a financial-management platform for 3.7 million small businesses globally, will integrate the Visa Direct real-time payments service into its new Instant Payouts feature. Instant Payouts also uses merchant acquirer Worldpay Inc.’s platform. The service will be released to North American customers in the coming months.
- Point-of-sale system developer SalesVu said a number of its free iPad apps can now be used on Square Inc. hardware.
- Minneapolis-based Sezzle Inc., provider of an interest-free installment-loan service for customers of its client merchants, said it raised $5.6 million in a funding round led by fintech investor Continental Investors. The funding round came ahead of Sezzle’s planned IPO on the Australian Stock Exchange, where it expects to raise another $20 million.
- Miva Inc., an e-commerce software and services provider for mid-size and large merchants, announced version 9.13 of its online shopping platform. The updated version adds new features to the MivaPay service, including the ability to reauthorize expired credit cards without needing to access the customer’s full card number.
- Retail and cobranded card issuer Synchrony Financial said first-quarter purchase volume on its cards and other credit products increased 10% year-over-year to $32.5 billion.
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