Competitive Strategies

• A London judge has rejected an effort by a consumer group in the United Kingdom to bring an $18 billion class-action suit against Mastercard Inc., according to Bloomberg News. The case is related to the card network’s cross-border transaction fees. • Square Inc. announced that Randy Garutti, chief executive of …

Visa Inc.’s top brass talked at length Thursday about payments opportunities abroad, but they also noted that U.S. payment volumes, particularly in credit cards, did quite well in the quarter ending June 30. “Our global business benefited from an overall healthy economy as payments volume grew in every major region,” …

Vantiv Inc. took the unusual step this week of filing a document with the Securities and Exchange Commission to dispute a research firm’s report about its merchant pricing. The payment processor says the report “claims Vantiv deceives merchants by marking up interchange fees.” The report about Vantiv’s allegedly high and …

PayPal Holdings Inc. made it clear on Thursday it isn’t done striking deals with banks and other payments companies. Only days after announcing a major partnership agreement with Samsung Pay, PayPal now says it will work more closely with JPMorgan Chase & Co. and the bank’s Chase Pay wallet. And …

Mastercard Inc. is expanding the options for merchants and consumers who want to use Quick Response codes for mobile payments. The expansion of Masterpass QR, announced Wednesday, will enable a merchant to scan a QR code generated and displayed on a consumer’s smart phone and process the payment through the …

Point-of-sale terminal maker Ingenico Group announced Thursday that it plans to buy Stockholm-based Bambora Group from Nordic Capital for €1.5 billion ($1.73 billion). The acquisition will put under Ingenico’s roof a fast-growing international payments provider that gets 90% of its revenues on a recurring basis. Stockholm-based Bambora counts 110,000 businesses …

Prepaid card provider Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. said its revenue for the second quarter ended June 17 totaled $463.1 million, an 18.4% increase from $391.2 million in the same period in 2016. The company’s loss of $6.4 million improved from the $11.3 million loss last year. Blackhawk said Target Corp. will be …

The forecast for person-to-person mobile payments is a heady one. Expect double-digit growth through 2021, says research firm eMarketer Inc. As more consumers adopt the growing number of P2P payments services, the value of their P2P mobile transactions will increase to $244.03 billion, up 103% from the $120.38 predicted for …

U.S. Bancorp on Wednesday reported modestly higher results in its merchant-acquiring unit for the second quarter, while ATM manufacturer Diebold Nixdorf Inc. posted a $31 million loss after lowering its financial projections for the year. Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp is the parent company of U.S. Bank and Elavon, the fifth-largest merchant …

The U.K. Treasury Ministry has said it is prohibiting merchants from assessing surcharges beginning January 1. Surcharges could be as much as 20% for purchases like a flight, the ministry said in a press release. In 2010, United Kingdom surcharges totaled 473 million pounds ($617 million). “Rip-off charges have no place in a modern Britain and …