E-Commerce

Strong consumer spending and a benign world economy worked in Mastercard Inc.’s favor in the first quarter, lifting the network’s U.S. purchase volume by nearly 11% and profits by over 30%. The No. 2 payment card network by volume on Wednesday reported that U.S. purchase volume rose 11% to $359 …

Processing giant First Data Corp. said on Monday Walmart Inc. has added Star signature debit acceptance to its roster of payment options. The company also noted that its integrated payments business continues to grow. Both observations came during the Atlanta-based company’s first-quarter earnings call with equity analysts. For the quarter, …

With digital-payments providers emerging all over the world to serve local and international consumers, the search is on for synchronized, standardized networks to transfer funds cross-border. Ripple, the San Francisco-based provider of distributed-ledger payments, says it has the answer, and late last week five payments services overseas signed on to …

Since its founding nine years ago, Square Inc. has focused on simplified checkout options and software for small brick-and-mortar merchants. With its acquisition of Weebly Inc., announced late Thursday, San Francisco-based Square is not only staging a major expansion into e-commerce, it’s also laying the groundwork for a significant outreach …

Visa Inc. isn’t about to pull the plug on Visa Checkout, but judging from comments Visa’s top executives made Wednesday, the online and mobile-payment service’s long-term outlook looks quite iffy. The future of both Visa Checkout and Mastercard Inc.’s Masterpass equivalent was called into question last week when The Wall …

The PayPal Holdings Inc. machine just keeps chugging. The company announced on Wednesday added momentum in the first quarter, driven in part by gains in consumer and merchant accounts, results for Venmo, its popular peer-to-peer payments app, and strong performance for One Touch, its streamlined checkout technology. Without offering details, …

Bitcoin is far from a mainstream payment method, but most merchants that accept the cryptocurrency are online sellers. On Monday, the Atlanta-based processor BitPay Inc. announced an update intended to bring Bitcoin and its recently hatched cousin, Bitcoin Cash, to more brick-and-mortar merchants. BitPay introduced its Checkout app, which works …

Speculation that Visa Checkout and Masterpass brands may be on the way out has surfaced following announcements last week from Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. they would support a shared buy button for online purchases based on EMVCo’s Secure Remote Commerce specification. Reports of a possible phaseout of Masterpass, launched …

The global payment networks announced last week their support for the EMVCo Secure Remote Commerce Framework (SRC) and mentioned proprietary programs being introduced predicated on this framework with the promise to deliver security, standardization, simplification, fraud reduction, and increased conversion for digital commerce. The promise sounds like a keeper. Yet …

Boosted by the rapid rise of chip card payments in Asia and the United States, more than half of general-purpose credit and debit cards worldwide now have an EMV chip, EMVCo reported Thursday. Plus, nearly two-thirds of card-present transactions now involve an EMV card being read by a point-of-sale terminal that …