Small businesses in Canada will reap lower interchange rates in that country, the Department of Finance Canada announced Thursday. The deal suggests a similar reduction is possible in the United States, the Merchant Payments Coalition quickly responded. Both Mastercard Inc. and Visa Inc. agreed to lower the domestic consumer credit …

Marathon Digital Holdings Inc., a digital-asset company that supports the Bitcoin ecosystem, is teaming up with Brink Technology to raise $1 million to support Bitcoin Core developers that maintain the Bitcoin protocol. Brink Technology works to strengthen the Bitcoin protocol and network. The Bitcoin protocol enables Bitcoin to function as …

Point-of-sale terminal maker PAX Technology Inc. released its Elys Workstation, a configurable POS device. It features a 14-inch screen, front-facing camera, and operates on the Android system. It can be paired with multiple PAX payment acceptance terminals. PayPal Holdings Inc.’s stock has traded in the mid-$60s range for days following a plunge early …

Payroc WorldAccess LLC has acquired Atlantic Merchant Services, LLC for an undisclosed sum. Raleigh, N.C.-based-Atlantic Merchant serves merchants and businesses across the mid-Atlantic region, as well as West Virginia, Tennessee, Michigan, and Texas. Atlantic Merchant’s services include touchscreen POS, mobile solutions, e-commerce, countertop terminals, and smart-phone applications. Merchant segments serviced …

EMTransfer LLC, a real-estate cash-management platform provider, has teamed up with KeyBank to bring real-time payments to the real-estate industry through The Clearing House Payments Co.’s RTP network. Using application programming interfaces from KeyBank, EMTransfer can connect parties involved in the real-estate closing process, such as title insurance and escrow …

Buoyed by Cash App, services, and a move up market Block Inc., parent of Square and Afterpay, generated nearly $5 billion in first-quarter revenue, a 25% increase from $4 billion in the same quarter a year ago. Its transaction-based revenue of $1.42 billion was a 15% increase from $1.29 billion …

Shift4 Payments Inc. is still waiting on approval from European regulators to complete its $525-million Finaro acquisition, but in the mean time the Allentown, Pa.-based processor has been busy expanding in its home market. That expansion includes yet other acquisitions aimed at consolidating Shift4’s grip on the restaurant point-of-sale market, …

Businesses were quick to adopt online chat platforms as a handy meeting tool during the pandemic, and now payments providers are starting to target the services as a new venue for transactions. One of the first is GoDaddy Inc., which on Monday announced it is working with Microsoft Corp. to …

Cannabis could be a huge opportunity for acquirers, but the wait for a ubiquitous PayPal-of-pot option continues. When it comes to electronic payments, the legal cannabis industry is starting to grow up. Cannabis was once considered the Wild West of the payment world because of all the skullduggery that took …

It’s May, and that means it’s time for our annual exercise to seek out and describe the payments players, apart from the big networks, that are rewriting the rules for the digital exchange of value. Since 2004, Digital Transactions has traced the course of payments innovation through its nimblest practitioners—the …