• While House Republicans have stripped from the Financial Choice Act a provision that would have repealed the Durbin Amendment, the effort to get rid of the law’s debit-interchange caps and routing rules is still alive. As the House voted to pass the Act, a trio of Congressmen spoke in the House on Thursday …

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is giving customers another reason both to take its credit cards and use its Walmart Pay mobile wallet by enabling new cardholders to use their credit accounts immediately upon approval via Walmart Pay rather than having to wait for a plastic card to come in the mail. …

• Merchant processor Payment Data Systems Inc. extended the expiration of its non-binding letter of intent to buy independent sales organization Singular Payments LLC to enable Payment Data to finish its due diligence and Singular to conclude its audit; both companies agreed to the extension, Payment Data said. Terms of the stock and …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews Payment technology provider VeriFone Systems Inc. reported Thursday that it plans to divest its line of products for taxicab payments and media services, and will take a minority interest in a joint venture that will own its current business in China. News of those developments came as …

• Tablet-based point-of-sale provider Revel Systems launched Revel University, an online training service for merchants using its technology. • Payments provider BlueSnap Inc. said merchants using its Powered Buy Platform now can accept Apple Pay transactions. • Nineteen percent of consumers used person-to-person payments through a financial institution in the past 30 days in a …

• Groundwork, a payments service for school sports, launched its service to let parents use bank accounts or cards to make payments for team expenses. Teams pay a fee of 2% plus 30 cents, with an additional charge for card payments, with all payment communication with parents managed by the Groundwork …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews Chipmaker Gemalto N.V. and risk-management firm ThreatMetrix Inc. announced that they are jointly providing online authentication technology to banks, payment-service providers, payment networks, and financial startups. Through a single vendor relationship, the companies’ customers can get access to ThreatMetrix’s Digital Identity Network and Amsterdam-based Gemalto’s various authentication …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews A landmark anti-steering case against American Express Co. is going to the U.S. Supreme Court. Attorneys general from 11 states have asked the high court to review a decision handed down in September by a federal appeals court that upheld AmEx’s policy of banning merchants from

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews The U.S. transition to the EMV chip card standard has been a long and troubled road, but statistics released by the international standards body behind EMV indicate encouraging progress. As of the end of 2016, 52.2% of major-brand payment cards in the United States—some 675 million …

• Washlava, a startup focusing on self-service laundromats, release its mobile app that enables users to reserve an LG Giant commercial washing machine and pay for the use via the app after tapping the phone against the machine. • Vending-payments specialist USA Technologies Inc. said the amount of contactless payments for laundry …