Transaction Processing

Confirming months of speculation, MasterCard Inc. announced Thursday that it has a definitive deal to acquire VocaLink Holdings Ltd., operator of the United Kingdom’s automated clearing house and faster-payments systems, for £700 million, or approximately $920 million, in cash. London-based VocaLink operates BACS, the U.K.’s ACH network, as well as the …

Dollar volume on Discover Financial Services’ Pulse electronic funds transfer network declined 9% in the second quarter, but that was an improvement from the first quarter’s 15% plunge and the bottom is in sight, Discover said on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the impact of grocery stores’ reluctance to accept credit cards for …

A majority of Americans—62%—believe credit and debit cards and other electronic payments will replace cash in their lifetimes, finds a recent Gallup Inc. poll. But that doesn’t mean cash will disappear any time soon, experts say. Of the more than 1,000 consumers surveyed, only 11% said it is very unlikely and …

• In a sign of further global expansion plans, merchant acquirer Square Inc. in June incorporated a business in the United Kingdom called Square Europe Ltd. and began testing its payment system in London, Reuters reported. Besides the U.S., Square already operates in Canada, Australia, and Japan. • Processor Total Merchant …

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s Canadian unit on Monday stopped accepting Visa cards at its three stores in Thunder Bay, Ontario, carrying out the threat the retailer issued last month in its dispute with Visa Inc. over card-acceptance costs. A spokesperson at Wal-Mart’s Canadian headquarters in Mississauga, Ontario, as well as a …

Payment card charge volumes and merchant-processing revenues rose at several of the nation’s biggest banks during the second quarter, according to company reports as the mid-year earnings season got underway this week. Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp reported Friday that its payments businesses produced 22%, or $328 million, of the company’s $1.52 …

• Processor First Data Corp. and terminal maker Ingenico Group announced a new solution supporting EMV tip adjust and the common application identifier for debit and running on Ingenico smart terminals. First Data has certified the solution on its Omaha platform. • The Merchant Advisory Group launched KnowYourPayments.com, a Web …

The percentage of U.S. consumers who experienced credit card fraud in the past five years leaped from 41% in 2014 to 47% in 2016, according to the “2016 Global Consumer Card Fraud: Where Card Fraud Is Coming From” report released Tuesday by Aite Group LLC. The report surveyed more than …

Fourth-quarter transaction decline rates for credit and debit cards used for subscription payments increased to 15.9% from a first-quarter 2015 low of 14.4%, based on the value of the transaction, according to a report from Recurly Inc., a recurring-payments specialist. The “Recurly Subscription Snapshot,” which analyzed 25 million recurring payments …

The acquiring business is accustomed to a slow rate of change, but that deliberate pace is masking radical underlying shifts in how merchants handle payments and whom they deal with for processing services, according to research at First Annapolis Consulting, Annapolis, Md. Change comes so slowly in this business that …