Shortly after the former Sage Payment Solutions rebranded as Paya early this year, company president Greg Cohen said the merchant processor would play a “value game,” not a low-price game. Following that strategy, Paya on Wednesday unveiled Paya Connect, a platform for software firms and independent sales organizations to create …

Unless you’re talking about check-writing or cash usage, just about every measure of transactions and volumes in payments is up, up, up these days. But a new study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta says consumers actually made fewer payments in October 2017 than they did a year earlier. …

With the economy still humming along, three of the nation’s biggest banks on Friday reported healthy increases in third-quarter payment card purchase volumes. JPMorgan Chase & Co., owner of the nation’s biggest bank-run merchant acquirer, posted $343.8 billion in merchant-processing volume, a 14% increase from $301.6 billion in 2017’s third …

The average ATM surcharge increased this year for the 14th year in a row, but ATM foreign fees eased a bit, according to Bankrate Inc.’s latest annual study of ATM and checking account fees. New York City-based Bankrate says the average surcharge is now $3.02, up 5 cents, or 1.7%, …

Online-commerce analytics firm eMarketer Inc. is out with its 2018 holiday spending forecast, and it has some encouraging news for merchant acquirers, especially those in the e-commerce and mobile-commerce space. New York City-based eMarketer’s “Holiday Shopping 2018: A Strong Economy Sets the Stage for a Spending Surge” report predicts total …

Small merchants are generating more payment volume, and health-care providers handily outlive restaurants and bars in their relationships with merchant acquirers, according to a new analysis from The Strawhecker Group. Data from the Omaha, Neb.-based consulting and research firm’s Acquiring Industry Metrics service shows that the average small and mid-size …

The co-defendant in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s insider-trading lawsuit against former Heartland Payment Systems Inc. chief executive Robert O. Carr will pay $528,608 to the SEC under a settlement approved Thursday by a federal judge. Katherine M. Hanratty, described as Carr’s long-time girlfriend, neither admitted nor denied the SEC’s …

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday unveiled a proposal to facilitate real-time settlement of faster payments. The Fed said it is not committed to any specific action on its plan, but banks and private-sector payment processors are watching for any infringement on their turf. “Over the past year, we have undertaken …

NACHA reported Monday that it has acquired the non-profit Business Payments Directory Association, a move that deepens the presence of the U.S. automated clearing house network’s governing body in business-to-business payments and provides an entrée into blockchain-based payments. Herndon, Va.-based NACHA said the BPDA will operate as a self-governed group …

The word “regulation” generates little enthusiasm in the merchant-acquiring industry, but it’s more palatable when “self” is the operative adjective rather than “government.” Thus, the Electronic Transactions Association is pushing its new Self-Regulation Program for acquirers, independent sales organizations, and payment facilitators. Launched early this month, the voluntary program requires …