Competitive Strategies

Shareholders of payment processor Worldpay Inc. this week voted overwhelmingly in favor of the company’s planned merger with Fidelity National Information Services Inc., which is expected to close in the third quarter.The Bancorp Inc., owner of The Bancorp Bank, a major prepaid card issuer, reported gross dollar volume on the bank’s prepaid cards …

In what may be the biggest anticlimax in their careers, employees at First Data Corp. will walk into their offices Monday morning as employees of Fiserv Inc. And if Fiserv chief executive Jeffery Yabuki’s ambitions prove fruitful, the combined company will play a leading role in fending off nonbanks like …

Cloud-based point-of-sale system provider Revel Systems Inc. launched the Revel Solution Partner program in an effort to get more merchants using its POS systems. Announced Thursday, the program sees qualified resellers managing the complete sales process for Revel Essentials, the San Francisco-based company’s POS system for small and mid-size businesses. …

First Data Corp. and Fiserv Inc. expect to close Monday on Fiserv’s $22-billion acquisition of First Data. The deal, announced in January, has received final required regulatory approvals and non-objections, First Data said. First Data announced $2.49 billion in revenue for the second quarter, up 2% year-over-year.A group of Congressional Democrats, including presidential …

PayPal Holdings Inc.’s payments juggernaut shows no signs of weakening, but the company has found its latest product integrations bedeviled by slowdowns, forcing it to postpone some expected revenue. One such integration with bill-payment specialist Paymentus Corp. is a crucial one because it will allow PayPal to enter an enormous, …

Facebook Inc. chief executive Mark Zuckerberg says his massive social-networking company is using an open process to get its proposed Libra cryptocurrency into the market and won’t roll it out until all concerns are addressed. Zuckerberg fielded questions about the controversial Libra project at the company’s second-quarter earnings conference call …

Discover Financial Services’ Payment Services unit reported its transaction volume grew 8% year-over-year to $61.8 billion, a result that included 7% growth for its Pulse electronic funds transfer network. Overall, total Discover revenue net of interest expense increased 10% to $2.85 billion, while net income jumped 13% to $753 million.In related …

The Zelle peer-to-peer payments network is starting to click for the smaller, everyday transfers it was designed to handle. Early Warning Services LLC, the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based banking-technology company that runs the 2-year-old network, reported on Tuesday that Zelle handled $44 billion in volume in the second quarter on 171 million …

Square Inc. is getting into the photography business as yet another way to add auxiliary services beyond payments designed to attract and retain merchants. The new service, dubbed Square Photo Studio, enables merchants, or sellers in Square’s lingo, to ship products to a Square studio in Brooklyn, N.Y., where they …

Whether most consumers will ultimately use Alexa or Siri or some other voice-activated device to make purchases may depend crucially on how much money is at risk.  As it turns out, slightly more than half of U.S. consumers would be comfortable using the technology to pay for relatively small-ticket goods …