Mastercard Inc. president and chief executive Ajay Banga says he’s “very, very optimistic” about the Secure Remote Commerce initiative to reduce clutter on online checkout pages. Banga’s comments came Tuesday morning as he reviewed Mastercard’s results for the third quarter, a period in which U.S. purchase volume rose 10.7% year-over-year …

First Data Corp. plans to further exploit its fast-growing Clover point-of-sale hardware and software platform for small and mid-sized businesses by bringing it to full-service restaurants. “Clover has always been strong in small, quick-service restaurants, but the FSR segment needs much deeper functionality and is a large addressable software market …

Discover Financial Services’s lending operations dwarf its payments business, but payments nonetheless are an important component of the company’s growth strategy, new chief executive Roger C. Hochschild said Thursday. Hochschild, who joined Discover in 1998 and served as its president and chief operating officer for 14 years, this month succeeded …

Visa Inc. has been talking up contactless payments lately, though its executives and spokespersons usually dole out percentages rather than hard numbers to describe what is still a minuscule market in terms of card numbers and transaction volume. But chief executive Alfred F. Kelly gave an eyebrow-raising statistic Wednesday regarding …

Fleet-fueling and corporate-payments provider WEX Inc. reported this week that it has a deal to acquire Noventis Inc., a bill-payment network and virtual card specialist. South Portland, Maine-based WEX said in a news release that it already has a “longstanding relationship” with Noventis as a supplier of virtual cards for …

The Zelle person-to-person payment service continued to gain traction in the third quarter. Zelle Network reported Tuesday that it processed $32 billion in the three months ended Sept. 30 on 116 million transactions. The latest figures represent a year-over-year growth rate of 67% in payment value and 83% in transactions. …

Best known for its ATMs, NCR Corp. has long been close to the point-of-sale payment business with its software products such as Retail One, Aloha, and NCR Silver, and its hardware for retailers and the hospitality industry that includes self-checkout systems for grocery stores. Now NCR is about to dive …

Strong cardholder spending generated higher discount revenue and contributed to a 22% profit increase at American Express Co. in the third quarter. AmEx late Thursday reported that U.S. card-billed business rose 10% to $194.6 billion from $176.4 billion a year earlier. International volume rose 5% to $100.1 billion, bringing AmEx’s …

Payment processor ACI Worldwide Inc. reported Thursday that Toronto-based BMO Financial Group, the parent company of Bank of Montreal and Chicago’s Harris Bank, has rolled out ACI’s payments hub, which can connect banks to real-time payment services. The rollout took nine months, which BMO and Naples, Fla.-based ACI characterized as …

Shortly after the former Sage Payment Solutions rebranded as Paya early this year, company president Greg Cohen said the merchant processor would play a “value game,” not a low-price game. Following that strategy, Paya on Wednesday unveiled Paya Connect, a platform for software firms and independent sales organizations to create …