Digital-money technology is irresistible, and its impact is going to be much more profound than we can imagine. Money—an entity of transactable value formed by faith, not by per se value— may be seen as the mother of all inventions. It allows inventors to invent rather than get bogged down …

Agents that sell card acceptance aren’t powerless when merchants gripe about the cost. Merchant discontent over card-acceptance fees is nothing new, but every few years the din rises several octaves, just as it has in 2023. While merchants, card issuers, the card networks, and politicians argue over whether acceptance costs …

Patches and updates won’t cut it in an increasingly competitive payments industry. Time to install modern computing power. While some financial institutions try to hang on to their legacy systems, the costs to manage, maintain, and repair these systems are rising. Many now spend more every year on patches, updates, …

These apps are becoming more popular and encompassing more and more sensitive data—which is exactly why they’re attracting cyberthieves. In today’s highly competitive market, brands are tasked with providing a seamless, integrated, and convenient user-app experience to attract users. With the limited space on smart phone home screens, companies have …

Numbers from Fiserv Inc. early Tuesday indicate the big processor’s payments and network business for financial institutions is growing at a steady clip, with September-quarter revenue in that business up 5% year-over-year, to $1.71 billion in volume. Riding that wave, the company’s top brass late Monday announced a deal with …

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s oversight effort in data-sharing regulation is more than a year old, but with its newly proposed data-rights rule—released last week—the agency is making a substantial move in the field. Under the Personal Financial Data Rights rule, consumers would have the power to share data associated …

J.P. Morgan Payments launched its pay-by-bank service, relying on open-banking technology from Mastercard Inc. The service lets customers pay bills directly from their bank accounts. Block Inc.’s Afterpay buy now, pay later platform announced a partnership with Nift Networks to offer users access to products and services offered by Nift. Point-of-sale system maker Revel …

Stax Payments has acquired payment-technology provider Atlantic-Pacific Processing Systems (APPS) for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition is expected to enable Stax to create a new end-to-end payments platform that includes an enhanced multi-channel offering, improved data reporting, and additional customization capabilities. “Our partners and customers want a simple, secure, multichannel …

Nacha, the governing body for the automated clearing house network, reported the system processed 212 million same-day payments worth $608 billion in the September quarter, up 20% and 27.1%, respectively, over the same period last year. Total volume for all ACH payment types for the quarter came to 7.8 billion, …

Payments provider NMI LLC announced Thursday it has acquired the commercial division of Sphere, a cloud-based software and payments-technology company. Sphere Commercial Division primarily serves non-integrated small and mid-size businesses. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Schaumburg, Ill.-based NMI says the acquisition will strengthen its underwriting and risk-management capabilities …