• Payments-technology provider VeriFone Systems Inc. said it created a 50-50 joint venture with Gas Station TV that will combine VeriFone’s Pump Media division with Gas Station TV; the venture will operate under the Gas Station TV brand and deliver 3.3 billion annual impressions through 18,000 locations in all 50 states by …

• Mastercard Inc. said it will move to close its acquisition of VocaLink Holdings Ltd.“within the next few weeks” now that the transaction has been cleared by the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority. • USA Technologies Inc. said it is providing its contactless ePort Connect payment device for entertainment kiosks from Sneaker …

• Merchant processor CardConnect Corp. is paying $39 million for its previously announced acquisition of MertzCo Inc. consisting of $12 million in cash and 1.98 million shares of CardConnect stock valued at $27 million, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing from CardConnect. • Visa Inc. has begun allowing issuers of Visa-branded commercial cards …

• Attorneys general from 18 states and the District of Columbia sent a letter this week to Congressional leaders urging them to oppose three pending joint resolutions that would overturn the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s controversial prepaid account rule. Consumer groups generally favor the rule, but business interests and many Republicans …

Increasingly, merchant demands for payments capability integrated with inventory control, order management, and myriad other point-of-sale functions are forcing independent sales organizations and independent software vendors to collaborate. In this webinar, learn how and why ISOs and ISVs are working together and how this collaboration can be made to work …

• Diebold Nixdorf Inc. claims to be the first ATM manufacturer to support Microsoft Corp.’s Windows 10 operating system. Microsoft will end support of Windows 7, widely used in ATMs, in January 2020. The company also introduced Essence, an ATM user interface that includes a touchscreen, an encrypted touchscreen PIN pad, …

• The Western Union Co. said it has integrated Apple Pay into its mobile app, allowing U.S. customers to use the mobile-payments service to fund money transfers to more than 200 countries and territories, including domestic bill payments. More than 60% of digital-money transfers on Western Union’s network are initiated on …

• In a bid to reach cash-only customers, Amazon.com Inc. launched Amazon Cash, a service that gives users a barcode they can store in their smart phone or print and bring to a participating store to add cash to their Amazon balance. Participating stores include CVS, Speedway, Kum & Go, and …

• China-based Ant Financial Services Group’s $880 million bid for wire-transfer provider MoneyGram International Inc. is generating increasing opposition in Congress on national-security grounds, according to press reports from Washington. U.S.-based Euronet Worldwide Inc. last month submitted an unsolicited $1 billion bid for MoneyGram. • Avangate, a subscription-management and e-commerce platform, announced …

The bad news about payments risk just keeps on coming. The Anti-Phishing Working Group Inc. reported last month that phishing attacks reached an all-time high in 2016, totaling 1,220,523. That was up fully 65% over 2015, the group says in its latest quarterly report. Another way to look at the …