The European Union on Thursday advanced legislation to curb the power of tech companies, legislation that would force them to provide more billing options to consumers on their highly popular app stores. In related news, Google and the big music streaming service Spotify this week announced Spotify users with Android …

The popularity of debit cards for card-not-present transactions, particularly online payments, is surging, and a new proposal from an industry trade group could expand that popularity while preventing fraud and facilitating merchants’ transaction-routing choices. The proposal is contained in a white paper released Tuesday by the U.S. Payments Forum, an …

POSaBIT Systems Corp., a payments provider for the legal cannabis industry, today added Texas and Georgia to its roster of states in which the fintech operates. The expansion provides further confirmation of growing demand for electronic payments in marijuana dispensaries. Kirkland, Wash.-based POSaBIT said in a news release that it …

The fast-growing field of open banking got another boost Monday when the big payment processor Fiserv Inc. announced a major industry player, MX Technologies Inc., will use its AllData Connect service. AllData Connect is part of Fiserv’s AllData Aggregation platform that provides consumer-permitted access to tokenized financial account and transaction …

Boosted by strong growth in its automated clearing house services, credit card acquiring, and other business lines, merchant processor Usio Inc. reported Thursday that its total dollars processed grew 215% in 2021’s fourth quarter from a year earlier and 184% for the full year. San Antonio, Texas-based Usio processed $9.5 …

Shift4 Payments Inc. is scheduled to have its first quarterly earnings call as a publicly held company on Thursday. Ahead of that call, company founder and chief executive Jared Isaacman is expressing satisfaction with the merchant acquirer’s June 4 initial public offering.  The oversubscribed IPO was priced at $23 per share, …

Like its bigger rival Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc. managed to remain profitable during the pandemic-ravaged second quarter and in recent weeks has been seeing improving transaction trends. Mastercard on Thursday reported total U.S. purchase volume of $405 billion in the quarter ended June 30, down 5% from $427 billion a …

Visa Inc. reported Tuesday that it managed to make nearly $2.4 billion in its June-ending quarter despite massive hits to its international volumes and credit card spending caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, and its chief executive also addressed the latest debit card controversy. Separately, online marketplace eBay Inc. reported its …

U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin and a Vermont Congressman want the Federal Reserve to look into what they say are efforts by debit card issuers “aided by the dominant card networks” to prevent PIN-debit networks from getting a bigger share of booming card-not-present payment volume. “The Federal Reserve should consider appropriate …

The ability of hackers to disrupt connected devices was on display over the weekend with Garmin Ltd., a major purveyor of fitness trackers, smart watches and related tech gear, including products that can make contactless payments, reporting service interruptions that some observers say have been caused by a ransomware attack. …