• Merchant processor Payroc LLC announced it has acquired payment gateway The iTransact Group. Terms were not disclosed. Besides the gateway, the deal brings 6,000 merchants with $1.3 billion in annual volume to Payroc, along with mobile point-of-sale technology and a payment-facilitator platform. • Payments provider Intrix Technology Inc. purchased the business …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews Its many critics have labeled the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as the regulatory agency run amok, but the CFPB declined to regulate virtual currencies in its newly released rule governing prepaid card accounts even though banks and consumer groups urged it to do so. The CFPB issued …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews Just a week into the fourth quarter, merchants and payments companies already are preparing for the busy holiday-shopping season. American Express Co. marks its seventh annual Small Business Saturday—Nov. 26—with the debut of the Shop Small Studio at ShopSmall.com. The service provides merchants with Web-site badges, flyers, …

• Office-supply giant Staples Inc. has begun accepting Apple Pay on its mobile Web site, m.staples.com. Staples early on began accepting Apple Inc.’s mobile wallet in its stores and on its app. Apple recently made the service available for browser-based payments using Safari. • More than half of consumers believe …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews For all the widespread anticipation of same-day settlement on the automated clearing house network, the first two weeks of faster processing has been a relatively quiet affair, bank executives and other experts tell Digital Transactions News. But that doesn’t mean a number of pressing questions aren’t …

By Peter Lucas@DTPaymentNews Payment processor Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) is rolling out Premium Payback, a rewards-redemption application that allows consumers to cash out rewards earned on credit and debit cards at the point of sale through participating merchants. FIS, which piloted Premium Payback at more than 7,000 BP …

• The Independent Community Bankers of America trade group submitted a faster-payments proposal to the Federal Reserve’s Faster Payments Task Force; developed with North American Banking Co., the ICBA proposal includes a white-label mobile application and a payments directory to enable transaction settlements through the automated clearing house network’s new …

By Jim Daly@DTPayment News Nearly two years and thousands of comments after issuing its draft regulation, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued its long-awaited final prepaid card rule Wednesday. The 1,689-page document, almost double the size of the draft rule the CFPB issued in November 2014, largely follows what the …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews Like a heavy Thanksgiving meal, the 1,689 pages of new prepaid account regulations from the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are going to take a while to digest. The rules cover everything from fee disclosures to overdrafts, and, predictably, they are is drawing praise from consumer groups …

• A federal judge in California has allowed an antitrust case to move forward against American Express Co., Discover Financial Services, MasterCard Inc., and Visa Inc. The case was filed in March by Florida merchants as a class-action suit alleging the networks had conspired to shift chargeback liability from banks …