Issuing/Originating

American Express Co. has acquired software developer Center. Terms of the deal, announced late Thursday, were not disclosed. The acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter. The deal will provide AmEx’s corporate and small-business cardholders with an integrated expense-management platform that delivers real-time visibility into all employee spending, …

Ten years ago, the U.S. payment card market made its shift to EMV chip cards, and along with that the industry prepared for more contactless payments. That work by issuers and card brands appears to have paid off because 92% of consumers are now familiar with NFC, the technology that …

Stripe Inc. has doubled its office space in Chicago, leasing more than 44,000 additional square feet on the fifth floor of a building in the city’s River North neighborhood and bringing its total space to about 89,000 square feet, according to Crain’s Chicago Business. Business-technology provider Globant announced it has developed systems for …

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday voted 51-47 to scrub a regulation issued in November by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and aimed at mobile wallets and digital money transfers. The repeal legislation, which now moves to the House of Representatives, comes as major payment-app developers like Apple Inc., Block Inc., …

The Federal Reserve announced its FedNow real-time payments network this summer will raise its transaction limit to $1 million from $500,000. FedNow was launched in 2023. Kasheesh Inc. launched a loyalty program called Kasheesh Rewards, aimed at letting users earn rewards based on spending. Kasheesh’s platform allows users to split transactions across credit, debit, and …

Compliance services provider LegitScript released a suite of services to help with merchant risk management. Among them is its Xray AI Risk Intelligence platform that can help with scanning merchant Web sites for card network violations, automatically detecting merchant category codes, and matching merchants against LegitScript’s risk intelligence database. Visa Inc. is working …

Flexa Inc., a digital-payments provider, has introduced tap-to-pay for cryptocurrency transactions. The contactless-payment method enhances digital-asset usability by enabling blockchain payments via NFC-enabled hardware wallets without a mobile phone or internet connection, the company says. Hardware wallets, known also as burner wallets, are physical devices that store private keys for …

Generation Y and Generation Z are the biggest users of buy now, pay later, according to J.D. Power’s annual BNPL satisfaction study. Some 42% of both generations use BNPL products, compared to 21% of consumers from other generations, the study says. Both generations tend to favor BNPL over credit cards …

With expectations growing that the Credit Card Competition Act will soon be reintroduced in Congress, proponents of the bill feel its prospects for passage are better than ever. Helping fuel this optimism is growing bipartisan support for the bill, proponents say. “The Senate Judiciary Committee [hearing in November] showed there …

Mastercard Inc.’s One Credential, just announced last week, already is seeing some recruiting success with payments-technology provider i2c Inc. enrolling as one of the first issuing-processing partners. The Mastercard One Credential is a digital-payment service that supports multiple payment methods, such as credit, debit, and prepaid, as well as installment loans, …