Merchant-services company Harbortouch Payments LLC has a new private-equity investor in a deal valued at more than $500 million. Searchlight Capital Partners L.P. announced Wednesday it made an investment in Allentown, Pa.-based Harbortouch. Jared Isaacman, Harbortouch chief executive and founder, says the deal is valued at more than $500 million, …

Canadian payment processor Beanstream says its U.S. foray is hoping to tap into its parent company’s international reach as Beanstream USA targets software developers and integrators. Beanstream’s U.S. effort—announced earlier this month—is meant to get a piece of the independent software vendor and value-added reseller market that so many payments …

Despite hiccups and hitches along the way, the conversion of the massive and highly fragmented U.S. payment card industry from magnetic-stripe credit and debit cards to ones bearing an EMV chip appears to be moving apace. The latest data from MasterCard Inc. finds the number of merchants accepting chip cards …

Wells Fargo Bank N.A.’s announcement Tuesday that it would launch a mobile wallet with payments capability built into the Android version of its banking app could be a win for the bank, and herald similar moves by other banks. That’s the assessment from Daniel Van Dyke, an analyst at Javelin …

Independent sales organizations, merchant acquirers, and payment facilitators catering to small-business owners who have e-commerce sites now can sell them a MasterCard Inc. service to help mitigate the risk associated with card-not-present transactions. MasterCard introduced Simplify Controls Monday, a service that includes an online dashboard and app that enables merchants …

JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Chase Pay mobile-payment service, announced in October, is on track for tests this summer with greater availability in the fourth quarter, according to Kim Fitzsimmons, head of global e-commerce and large omnichannel solutions at Chase Commerce Solutions. Fitzsimmons, who spoke Monday during a panel discussion at …

Members of Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime membership service are enthusiastic users of the e-retail giant’s payments service, which it makes available to other merchants. In fact, some 50% of Amazon Pay’s users belong to Prime, according to Amazon Pay vice president Patrick Gauthier, who spoke with Digital Transactions News Tuesday at …

Payments startup Payzing Inc. is banking that a digital-currency integration with Uphold, a virtual funds and commodity platform, will lead to e-commerce success. San Francisco-based Payzing uses Uphold’s blockchain technology to offer online merchants an alternate payment method to traditional credit and debit cards. Consumers use their Uphold accounts to …

Pricing advantages once held by super-large acquirers—those whose merchants process more than 3 million monthly credit and debit transactions—appear to have retreated, according to the Merchant Processing Pricing Benchmark Study recently issued by The Strawhecker Group. These jumbo acquirers had, on average, the lowest amounts for their processing and authorization …

Independent sales organizations and merchant-services salespeople considering selling all or part of their merchant portfolios have to consider more than finding the right buyer, said a panel of acquiring specialists. While some portfolio valuations might spike as high as the 40s—referring to a multiple of the net monthly processing revenue—that’s not …