Merchant processor Square Inc. is making it easier for its restaurant clients to use third-party delivery services, while at the same time fortifying itself against bigger merchant acquirers slated to merge into even bigger ones. San Francisco-based Square, which has its own restaurant delivery, pick-up, and catering service called Caviar, …

A data-security services firm says it has spotted approximately 200,000 payment card numbers in online fraudster marketplaces stolen from a collections firm serving diagnostic laboratories, but it expects more to come up for sale later. Secaucus, N.J.-based Quest Diagnostics Inc. reported Monday that financial and other data on some 11.9 …

May became the first negative month of 2019 for payments stocks as worries about tariffs and an economic slowdown as a result gripped the wider market. Chicago-based Barrington Research Associates Inc. reported Monday that a 29-company group of transaction-processor stocks posted a mean return of negative 2.57% last month. Only …

Note to payments-company owners: now just might be the right time to sell. Buyers in 2019 have paid more for firms in the payment-tech space since at least 2010, according to a new analysis by 451 Research of more than 1,100 deals over nearly a decade. The median price to …

EMV chip cards continued to gain share of U.S. card payments in early 2019, although their conquest is not yet complete more than three years after the payment card networks’ EMV liability shifts. But Visa Inc. says counterfeit fraud is dropping sharply, as intended. Visa reported Thursday that 3.5 million …

A five-year-old lawsuit brought by payday lenders against federal banking regulators over the government’s controversial Operation Choke Point ended with a settlement this week. Advance America, Cash Advance Centers Inc. (Advance America), and Check Into Cash had sued the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of the Comptroller of …

Fraud attacks involving rogue mobile applications jumped nearly 300% in the first quarter from the preceding quarter, and fraudulent card-not-present transactions rose 17%, fraud-control services provider RSA Security says in a new report. Bedford, Mass.-based RSA says it flagged 41,313 attacks from rogue apps compared with 10,390 in 2018’s fourth …

The beaten-down shares of vending-machine payments provider USA Technologies Inc. jumped nearly 15% Tuesday on news that a hedge fund had taken a 12% stake in the company. In a regulatory filing, New York City-based Hudson Executive Capital LP said it believes USAT’s “shares are undervalued and are an attractive …

Contactless payments account for only an estimated low-single-digit share of U.S. general-purchase credit and debit card transactions, but contactless has a much greater share of payments in Canada and the United Kingdom, recently released data show. Canada’s largest merchant acquirer, Toronto-based Moneris Solutions Corp., says that in the first quarter …

First-quarter growth in leading merchant processor First Data Corp.’s portfolios lagged growth posted in the preceding two quarters, but in a rare event physical merchants posted higher sales increases than their online counterparts. In its latest SpendTrend report, First Data says total payment card spending at U.S. merchants on its …