The Western States Acquirers Association announced two new board members, Amanda Beam of Humboldt Merchant Services and Glenn Smith of NCR Corp. Also, Scott DeFazio, Fiserv Inc., was elected secretary for 2021 and Jason Putnam, The Independent Bankers Bank N.A., Deborah Camm, SafraPay, and Lane Connor, Fuzse, were reelected as president, vice …

The remittance giants haven’t been shy over the last two years in adopting card-network technology and local payments services to close the last mile for fast transfers directly to users’ mobile devices. And MoneyGram International Inc. on Friday played its latest card in this market with an arrangement that will …

New national systems, the card networks, and blockchain operations are all piling into real-time payments. What’s going on, and why? If the travails of 2020 had any advantages, they lay in how the struggle with the pandemic offered opportunities to demonstrate the vital utility of technologies like contactless payments and …

Visa and Mastercard are the world’s premier networks for card transactions. Can they afford to rest content with that distinction? It’s safe to say that most readers of this story have spent most of their adult lives with plastic tokens branded by Visa or Mastercard in their wallet. The two …

Multiple real-time services may flourish, but don’t discount the Fed’s ability to corner volume. Over the last several decades, there has been a crescendo of interest from regulators and the industry worldwide in real-time interbank payments. Instant interbank payments displace batch automated clearing house transfers and enable new use cases, …

The pandemic is changing payments, but it’s also reworking payments strategies. Here’s how the industry will have to react in the next few years. Covid-19 has dramatically transformed daily life in many ways all too familiar by this point. While we know that the pandemic will end, the timing is …

Online purchases using installment credit will total $680 billion globally in 2025, up 92% from $353 billion last year, projects Kaleido Intelligence.In related news, point-of-sale installment lender Laybuy launched a partner program to help smaller retailers offer the credit. More than 6,000 merchants offer Laybuy.MetaBank N.A., a unit of Meta Financial Group Inc., …

Real-time payment flows are coming to processor settlements with merchants as Visa Inc. enlarges the market for its Visa Direct push-payment service. The latest development emerged this week with EVO Payments Inc.’s launch of EVO Direct Deposit, a service that relies on Visa Direct to credit U.S. merchant accounts. The …

Big moves by Visa and Mastercard have thrust data aggregators into the spotlight just as the focus of payments is expanding and the aggregation model is modernizing. Like most businesses, the payments world has been upended by the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on buyers and sellers alike. But just …

The global retail-payment networks Mastercard and Visa are on a tear, acquiring and investing in adjacent payment-opportunity space in networks that can leverage and reinforce their existing franchises.  Their traditional payment schemes are dominant worldwide and near indestructible. While for the foreseeable future they could grow on autopilot, to their …