Transaction Processing

UnionPay, an international payment card network based in China, said it is now accepted in 183 countries and regions, with issuance outside the Chinese mainland exceeding 230 million cards in 81 countries. Issuance outside Mainland China commenced in January 2004. Consumer-finance and card issuer Synchrony said it is testing a browser extension …

FedNow, the real-time payments network operated by the Federal Reserve, announced late Tuesday it has 400 financial institutions participating as senders or receivers after six months of operation. The much-anticipated Fed service launched last July with 35 participating financial institutions. Participating institutions range in size from less than $500 million …

Apple Inc. will let developers enable purchases outside of its App Store, marking a change that previously prohibited such action. The move comes in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court this week declining to hear appeals from either Apple or Epic Games in their court saga. Epic sued Apple …

Visa Inc. said it has closed on its acquisition of Pismo, a card-issuing and banking platform operating in Latin America, Asia-Pacific, and Europe. The announcement follows Visa’s agreement in June to acquire Pismo for $1 billion in cash. Payments-technology company Brightwell said it will implement Visa Direct to enable payouts to eligible bank accounts and …

Giant payment processor Fiserv Inc. wants to take on another aspect of the business with its application for a special bank charter in Georgia. The charter for a merchant-acquirer limited purpose bank, if approved, would enable Brookfield, Wis.-based Fiserv to interact with card networks directly instead of operating through a …

Payments-platform provider Payroc LLC has launched PayByCloud, low-code, semi-integrated technology for independent software vendors that establishes a cloud-based connection between Payroc’s application hosted on a payment device and the Payroc gateway.  PayByCloud is intended to eliminate the friction of connecting software to payment devices in the cloud, without the need …

Nuvei Corp. said it has agreed to process e-commerce transactions for Galeries Lafayette UAE, a unit of French Department Stores LLC. Linnworks, an e-commerce inventory and order-management software provider, said it is working with Lightspeed Commerce Inc. to enable Linnworks clients to connect to Lightspeed Retail. Fintech Varo Bank N.A. announced it is offering a …

MagicCube Inc. has partnered with processor Shift4 Payments Inc. to make its iAccept softPOS application available to Shift4 merchants. MagicCube’s i-Accept app turns Android smart phones and tablets into PCI-compliant payment devices that can accept contactless payments using tap-to-pay with or without a PIN. The deal is considered a boost …

With a variety of checkout strategies confronting merchants, NCR Voyix, which styles itself the “world’s largest self-checkout vendor,” has launched new self-checkout technology that relies on a software-as-a-service foundation that enables stores to offer barcode scanning, contactless payments, and other features. The company’s announcement came on the opening day of …

Banking giant Bank of America Corp. reported combined credit and debit card volume of $228.9 billion for the fourth quarter, up 3% year-over-year. The number of BofA users of the Zelle peer-to-peer payments network grew 18% to 21.5 million, while Zelle volume climbed 25% to $101 billion. Late in 2021, the …