Toronto-based loyalty-services and payments start-up nanoPay Corp. has acquired the MintChip digital-currency platform from the Royal Canadian Mint, the organizations announced Tuesday. The purchase price wasn’t disclosed, but nanoPay says it could be revealed at a later date. MintChip gained fame in 2012, just as Bitcoin and other virtual currencies …

Two reports released Friday afternoon about consumer spending in the 2015 holiday season document continued strong growth in online commerce, although one report has e-commerce falling slightly short of earlier predictions. And mobile commerce is the new star of consumer payments. In its final report about the 2015 holidays, Internet …

Merchant processor First American Payment Systems L.P. on Thursday reported that it bought the independent sales organization portfolio of Chase Commerce Solutions, the merchant-acquiring and payment-processing unit of banking giant JPMorgan Chase & Co. Neither company would disclose the purchase price or the number of ISOs and merchants involved in the …

Payment processors Square Inc. and First Data Corp. made headlines in 2015’s market for initial public offerings of stock, but neither company was a standout, according to recent market reviews. In fact, a new analysis by PitchBook, a Seattle-based provider of a data-analysis platform for venture-capital and other financial firms, lists …

You thought your refrigerator was just for storing and cooling your food? Think again. MasterCard Inc. says it has introduced the first app that lets a consumer buy groceries from a refrigerator. The app is preloaded into Samsung’s new, high-tech Family Hub refrigerator that features a 21.5-inch touchscreen as well …

It was a lousy December for payment stocks, but 2015 as a whole saw shares of electronic transaction processors far outperform the major market indexes, according to a new report from Chicago-based investment firm Barrington Research Associates Inc. Shares of 28 payments companies posted a mean return of 11.47% last …

Data breaches that compromised credit and debit card information were constantly in the news in 2015, but the number of cards affected is way down from the totals for 2014 and 2013, according to a nonprofit that monitors breaches. The San Diego-based Identity Theft Resource Center reports that as of …

Visa Inc. has announced new data-security requirements for small merchants, one of which says that beginning Jan. 31, 2017, merchant acquirers must annually validate compliance by their so-called Level 4 merchants with the Payment Card Industry data security standard. Other new Visa requirements involve qualified integrators and resellers, or QIRs. …

In payments-industry circles, the Federal Reserve System’s triennial Payments Study is one of the most eagerly awaited documents to come out of Washington. The sweeping study tracks the use of credit, debit, and prepaid cards, checks, and other non-cash payment methods. For its next survey, due out in about a …

Confirming rumors that have been rife for days, merchant acquirer Global Payments Inc. announced late Tuesday that it will buy smaller rival Heartland Payment Systems Inc. in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $4.3 billion. At $100 per share, the deal represents an 18% premium over Heartland’s closing share price Tuesday. …