Issuing/Originating

As if retailers and merchants didn’t have anything else to worry about, a malware threat called IcedID wants to set itself off as a special type, says a researcher at IBM Corp. In a blog post released Wednesday, the researcher says the criminal gangs using IcedID—disovered and named by IBM …

With the proposed merger of processing giants First Data Corp. and Fiserv Inc. looming over the payments landscape, players that both work and compete with the two companies are in a potentially ticklish position. But the chief executive of one such company made it clear Wednesday morning that First Data …

Mastercard Inc. named Paul Stoddart, who had been CEO of Vocalink after Mastercard acquired the U.K.-based real-time payments firm in 2017, as president, New Payment Platforms, effective March 1. Stoddart will oversee development of Mastercard’s real-time capabilities beyond traditional card-based services, including Vocalink, the Homesend joint venture, and Mastercard Send. …

PayPal Holdings Inc. says it has lent $50 billion to American consumers since it bought the BillMeLater lending service 11 years ago. The company also advanced its efforts to generate revenues from its Venmo peer-to-peer payment service by making subscription payments to the Tidal music-streaming service available through Venmo. Now …

The concept of push payments is finding favor among payments providers as two companies separately announce new disbursement services. Atlanta-based Repay said its Instant Funding service enables organizations to send funds directly to eligible Visa Inc. debit and prepaid cards via Visa Direct, the network’s real-time debit service. Repay’s lending clients, …

Point-of-sale technology provider Revel Systems released two new product lines, Revel Enterprise, for multilocation businesses, and Revel Essentials, aimed at restaurants and businesses with 20 or fewer locations. Shift4 Payments renamed its payment-management platform Lighthouse Transaction Manager. Formerly Dollars on the Net, the service enables merchants to access transaction reporting, …

Growth on the automated clearing house network continued apace in 2018’s fourth quarter, boosted by same-day transactions, person-to-person payments, and online commerce. The massive network linking nearly all of the nation’s financial institutions tallied 5.97 billion transactions, up 8.7% from 5.49 billion a year earlier. It was the network’s fastest …

So far, Visa Inc. has dominated the headlines regarding the U.S. conversion to contactless payment cards. Mastercard Inc., however, will soon be getting into the act. “In the U.S., contactless momentum continues to grow on both issuing and acceptance sides,” Mastercard president and chief executive Ajay Banga said Thursday. “We …

Point-of-sale system maker Lightspeed debuted Lightspeed Payments, a service for in-store and e-commerce payments. The service unifies a merchant’s card-present and card-not-present transaction data into one reporting location within the Lightspeed POS software. Regardless of the card type, merchants pay 2.6% plus 10 cents per card-present payment and 2.6% plus …

Visa Inc. saw payment volume growth of nearly 11% in the quarter ended Dec. 31, and sees ever-more contactless cards and volume on its Visa Direct real-time payments service in its future. Visa on Wednesday reported a respectable first quarter of fiscal 2019, according to its chief executive, despite the …