Confirming rumors that the Federal Trade Commission is looking into issues involving debit card transaction routing, Visa Inc. late last week reported the Federal Trade Commission has asked it to voluntarily provide information about its routing practices. In a brief notice in its fiscal 2019 report to the Securities and …

Merchant processor Priority Technology Holdings Inc. posted an 11% increase in payment volume in the third quarter despite the wind-down of its once-sizable processing business for online subscription billers. Alpharetta, Ga.-based Priority said it processed $10.8 billion in merchant bank card volume versus $9.71 billion in 2018’s third quarter, on …

Compliance with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard remains an elusive goal for many merchants and other organizations that handle general-purpose payment card data. In fact, compliance fell in 2018 for the second year in a row, according to Verizon Communications Inc. Verizon’s newly released Payment Security Report says only …

A retail trade association as well as Target Corp. have endorsed the Federal Reserve’s planned FedNow real-time gross settlement service. In a letter posted last week on the official FedNow comment site, the Washington, D.C.-based Retail Industry Leaders Association said “over the past decades RILA has seen competition and innovation …

Top executives of the newly combined Fiserv Inc.-First Data Corp. say they can save more than $1.1 billion in annual costs while still developing competitive new products and markets for their bank and merchant clients. “The power of this new company has far greater reach than I imagined when we …

A federal judge is scheduled to hear arguments Thursday on whether a proposed settlement worth up to $6.24 billion in damages to card-accepting merchants is fair.  The hearing in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, N.Y., is expected to draw a roomful of lawyers for defendants Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc. and …

Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) officially became part of Global Payments Inc. only on Sept. 18, but the massive task of stitching two large payment processors together didn’t stop Global from buying yet another financial institution’s merchant portfolio. Global announced Thursday that it will acquire the entire 40,000-merchant file of …

Apple Inc. chief executive Tim Cook reiterated Wednesday what his counterpart at The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said two weeks ago: the Apple Card’s debut was the most successful launch of a credit card in U.S. history. Cook didn’t provide numbers, though he did announce a no-interest promotion when the …

Two subsidiaries of The Kroger Co. have ended their boycott of Visa credit cards that started 14 months ago over acceptance costs, but it’s unknown if Visa granted the grocery-store giant any fee reductions. Local media outlets in the West reported Wednesday morning that Visa credit card acceptance had resumed …

Mastercard Inc. switched 20% more transactions on its worldwide network in the third quarter than it did a year earlier as purchase volumes remained strong and new growth markets generated more payments. “Growth was broad-based,” Mastercard president and chief executive Ajay Banga said Tuesday morning during the company’s third-quarter earnings …