Law and Regulation

The SPAC trend has come to the blockchain industry. Circle Internet Financial Inc. announced early Thursday it has agreed to be acquired by Concord Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company, in a deal that will take Circle public and values the 8-year-old company at $4.5 billion. That valuation would …

Fraud-management platform Riskified Ltd. has filed for an initial public offering of its Class A Ordinary Shares.  Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, and Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC are the lead underwriters. Barclays Capital Inc., KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc., Piper Sandler & Co., Truist Securities, Inc., …

Slice, which provides an ordering and payment app for independent pizzerias, added Slice Payments as an in-store payment platform. Slice Payments can be used with Slice Register, its point-of-sale service, or as a standalone option.Splitit Inc., a U.S. buy now, pay later provider, said it will integrate its installment-payment platform with tabby, …

In a deal that underscores the crucial importance of open banking in payments, Visa Inc. early Thursday said it has agreed to pay $2.15 billion to buy Tink AB, a 9-year-old, Stockholm-based company whose network connects to 3,400 financial institutions throughout Europe. The agreement comes five months after Visa abandoned …

Payments provider Repay Holdings Corp. closed on its $503-million cash-and-stock acquisition of BillingTree, an 18-year-old payments-technology provider. The deal, the largest in Repay’s history, was announced May 10.NCR Corp. said it expects to close its $2.5-billion acquisition of ATM-network specialist Cardtronics plc on June 21. The merger agreement was announced in January.Freight-payments provider PayCargo received a $125-million Series …

Payments provider Adyen NV announced the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has approved the company’s application for a federal foreign branch in San Francisco. The Federal Reserve granted its approval in May. Adyen says the U.S. branch license will allow its single platform to scale and introduce more services for …

Heeding years-long requests from merchants for a solution to simplify sales-tax compliance, Stripe Inc. on Thursday introduced Stripe Tax, an application that allows merchants to automatically calculate and collect sales tax, value-added tax (VAT), and goods-and-services tax (GST) in the United States and more than 30 other countries. Spurring the need …

Soon, there might be just two states that prohibit credit card surcharging with the passage Tuesday of a bill in Colorado that would permit the pricing strategy. The bill, SB21-091, passed both the Colorado House and Senate and now moves to Governor Jared Polis’s desk. He has 30 days to …

Point-of-sale developer SpotOn introduced SpotOn Sidekick, a handheld POS-acceptance device designed specifically for food trucks, pop-up dining, cafes, and other mobile food kitchens. Pricing was not disclosed.Visa Inc. said banking giant Goldman Sachs will deploy Visa’s B2B Connect and Visa Direct Payouts platforms to speed cross-border business-to-consumer and business-to-business payments for Goldman client …

From a merchant perspective, one of the most harmful features of today’s card networks is default pricing. One merchant advocate succinctly described the anti-competitive impact of default pricing, stating, “with default pricing, banks have no incentive to compete for merchants’ business.”  Today, individual merchants are forced to face off against …