By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews As the new chief executive of Visa Inc., a company that is still digesting its former European franchisee, Alfred Kelly has had a busy couple of months. Since taking charge from former CEO Charles W. Scharf in December, Kelly has stopped by 12 Visa offices globally, met …

It was only a matter of time before the 120-year-old automobile became a payments device. At the 2017 CES, a consumer electronics exhibition in Las Vegas, American Honda Motor Co. Inc. early last month demonstrated an in-vehicle payments system for parking and paying for fuel. Honda held the demonstration in …

Counterfeiting is still the king of U.S. payment card fraud, according to the Federal Reserve’s recently released Payments Study 2016, but probably not for long thanks in part to the coming of EMV chip cards and the aftereffects of data breaches. Counterfeit fraud accounted for 44% of U.S. payment card …

Payments companies are taking strides toward integrating rewards for everyday purchases into mobile wallets, while making it easier to redeem those rewards at point-of-sale terminals. Last month, vending-payments specialist USA Technologies Inc. said it is integrating its MORE. loyalty platform into Apple Pay. The deal is designed to induce more …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Payments professionals who suspect fraud is getting significantly worse were confirmed in their suspicions Wednesday with a report indicating identity fraud hit an all-time high in 2016, affecting some 15.4 million U.S. consumers. That’s up nearly 18% from 2015 and represents a one-third increase from the …

• Processor Vantiv Inc. reported its Merchant Services unit increased net revenue in the quarter ended Dec. 31 14% to $412 million from $363 million in the year-ago quarter on a 13% rise in transactions and 1% increase in net revenue per transaction. For all of 2016, Merchant Services’ net revenue jumped …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews Vantiv Inc.’s

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Wednesday announced a consent order that requires Mastercard Inc. and UniRush LLC, program manager of the prepaid RushCard, to pay $10 million in restitution to cardholders and a $3 million civil fine as a result of an October 2015 processing glitch …

• Merchant acquirer Square Inc. announced a promotion that waives processing costs for small businesses on more than $12,000 in Apple Pay charge volume. It will give free processing on Apple Pay transactions for small-business customers that enroll this year in a promotion that includes purchase of Square’s contactless and EMV chip card reader …

• Bloomberg reported that prepaid card services provider Green Dot Corp. is in talks to buy UniRush, a smaller competitor co-founded by Russell Simmons, the music-industry entrepreneur behind the rap label Def Jam. • In another possible deal, U.K.-based accounting and payroll software firm Sage Group plc is mulling a sale of its U.S. …