Merchant-processing revenues from North America grew 7% year-over-year in 2018’s fourth quarter to $1.1 billion on a comparable accounting basis, First Data Corp. reported Wednesday. First Data, which has an agreement to be acquired by processor Fiserv Inc. in a $22 billion all-stock deal, reported total quarterly revenues of $1.42 …

PayPal Holdings Inc. says it has lent $50 billion to American consumers since it bought the BillMeLater lending service 11 years ago. The company also advanced its efforts to generate revenues from its Venmo peer-to-peer payment service by making subscription payments to the Tidal music-streaming service available through Venmo. Now …

New Jersey legislators last week passed a bill with overwhelming support to prevent businesses from banning consumers from using cash for purchases. The bill, which now goes to Gov. Phil Murphy for his signature, would make New Jersey only the second state to protect cash-using customers in stores. The proposed …

Growth on the automated clearing house network continued apace in 2018’s fourth quarter, boosted by same-day transactions, person-to-person payments, and online commerce. The massive network linking nearly all of the nation’s financial institutions tallied 5.97 billion transactions, up 8.7% from 5.49 billion a year earlier. It was the network’s fastest …

So far, Visa Inc. has dominated the headlines regarding the U.S. conversion to contactless payment cards. Mastercard Inc., however, will soon be getting into the act. “In the U.S., contactless momentum continues to grow on both issuing and acceptance sides,” Mastercard president and chief executive Ajay Banga said Thursday. “We …

Visa Inc. saw payment volume growth of nearly 11% in the quarter ended Dec. 31, and sees ever-more contactless cards and volume on its Visa Direct real-time payments service in its future. Visa on Wednesday reported a respectable first quarter of fiscal 2019, according to its chief executive, despite the …

Square Inc.’s share price slid 10% Tuesday in the wake of an analyst’s report saying growth for the high-flying merchant processor is becoming tougher. Square’s organic growth probably peaked in 2018’s third quarter and growth in subscriptions and services will slow in 2019’s second quarter as recent acquisitions are absorbed, …

The number of known data breaches fell 24% in 2018, but the number of compromised records that contained sensitive personally identifiable information more than doubled from 2017’s levels to over 450 million, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center’s latest annual data-breach review. The San Diego-based non-profit and partner CyberScout …

Holders of Discover cards can now add their cards to the Garmin Pay mobile wallet for Garmin International Inc. wearable devices to make contactless payments, Discover Financial Services and Garmin announced Monday. Today’s announcement means that Discover is joining Visa and Mastercard as a payment option for Garmin Pay wallet …

In a rare public bidding war pitting the two leading payment card networks against each other, British business-to-business payment processor Earthport Plc’s board of directors on Friday recommended that its shareholders accept Mastercard Inc.’s all-cash buyout offer, which is 10% higher than Visa Inc.’s offer the board endorsed less than …