Transaction Processing

• Financial-institution processor Fiserv Inc. said its payments segment posted adjusted revenues of $701 million in the third quarter, up 9% from $643 million a year earlier. Operating income rose 11.5% to $242 million. • Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced service changes in the U.S. and Mexico, and lower prices, involving …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews As payments firms seek to commercialize emerging online marketplaces, they’re starting to leverage automated routines that promise to overturn traditional transaction methods and, just possibly, deliver on the long-sought goal of so-called frictionless payments. This week, both MasterCard Inc. and PayPal Holdings Inc. announced new initiatives …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews You thought Visa Inc. was big already? Boosted by Visa Europe and solid growth in the U.S. and some other regions, the world’s largest card network’s credit and debit card payment volume grew 47% in the quarter ended Sept. 30. Foster City, Calif.-based Visa Inc. on Monday …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews It’s in its infancy, but the Internet of Things, or IoT, will represent a $14 billion revenue opportunity globally by 2020 for payments firms smart enough to capitalize on it, according to research firm IDC Financial Insights. “That is a very conservative estimate,” James Wester, research director …

Visa Inc. announced Thursday that credit and debit card issuers in Europe will be the first issuers to adopt Visa’s program for using 3-D Secure 2.0, the impending update to an authentication protocol for online transactions originally introduced more than a decade ago. Visa said certain rules, such as fraud-chargeback …

• Merchant acquirer Worldpay brought its Worldpay Total integrated payments platform to the U.S.; Worldpay introduced the platform in the United Kingdom in November 2014 and extended it to European e-commerce merchants earlier this year. • U.S. Bancorp, owner of merchant acquirer Elavon, posted $412 million in merchant-processing revenues in …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews U.S. consumers are becoming more aware of mobile payments, which could potentially increase use of the burgeoning digital-payment method. Indeed 56% of them are “extremely aware” of the technology, finds the 2016 North America Consumer Digital Payments Survey from Accenture. In 2015, the figure was 52%. Only …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews Charles Scharf accomplished a lot in less than four years as Visa Inc.’s chief executive—he oversaw Visa’s acquisition of Visa Europe, a groundbreaking peace accord with PayPal Holdings Inc., and a cobranding and acceptance deal with Costco Wholesale Corp., among other things—but one of his unfinished tasks …

• Bank of America Corp. said its debit card purchase volumes totaled $71 billion in the third quarter, up 2.5% from $69.3 billion a year earlier. U.S. credit card purchase volume increased 2% to $57.6 billion. BofA said it now has 21.3 million mobile-banking users, a 15.8% increase from 18.4 …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews While the payments business is caught up these days in working out strategies for mobile apps and social media, it turns out these aren’t the cutting-edge technologies they once were. Instead, fields like virtual reality, machine learning, and natural language are winning the spotlight. That’s according …