Boosted by its $1.05 billion acquisition of the big independent sales organization and merchant processor Cayan LLC in January, payment processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) saw its merchant revenues rise nearly 22% in the first quarter. TSYS’s Merchant Solutions segment posted net revenues of $317.4 million, a 21.8% increase …

Contactless point-of-sale debit and credit card transactions are barely a blip on the U.S. payments screen, but on London’s vast public-transportation system, payments from contactless cards or smart phones now account for half of all pay-as-you-go fares on subways and rail lines, system operator Transport for London reported Tuesday. Contactless …

Driven by growth in the United States, Europe, and Russia, global remittances grew 7% in 2017 to $613 billion from $573 billion in 2016, the World Bank reported Monday. At the same time, the average cost of remittances fell, though expenses remain more than twice as high as the World …

Boosted by the rapid rise of chip card payments in Asia and the United States, more than half of general-purpose credit and debit cards worldwide now have an EMV chip, EMVCo reported Thursday. Plus, nearly two-thirds of card-present transactions now involve an EMV card being read by a point-of-sale terminal that …

Boosted by higher cardholder spending, American Express Co.’s discount revenue grew 9% in the first quarter despite a year-over-year decline in its average worldwide discount rate. AmEx reported late Wednesday that discount revenue hit $5.89 billion compared with $5.39 billion a year earlier. Discount revenue is by far AmEx’s largest …

Russia gets a bad rap because of its notorious hackers, but more U.S. e-commerce fraud originates from China and Venezuela than Russia, according to a new report from Experian plc. Experian, which is based in Dublin, Ireland, but has large U.S. businesses in credit reports and marketing and data services, …

American Express Co. disclosed Monday that it will end its multi-merchant Plenti rewards program on July 10. AmEx announced the closure through a tweet on the Plenti Twitter feed and on Plenti’s Web site. “While Plenti has grown in scale since its launch, a number of factors, including shifting priorities …

President Donald Trump’s proposed 25% tariffs on about 1,300 Chinese products worth $50 billion have the merchant-acquiring industry worried. The Electronic Transactions Association, a national payments-industry trade group, joined more than 100 other organizations in signing a letter to the House Ways and Means Committee leadership expressing their “deep concern” …

Uber and mass-transit software developer Masabi Ltd. have struck an agreement that will allow transit tickets and passes to be displayed on Uber’s mobile app. Masabi’s apps and software systems for transit are used in 30-plus metropolitan areas, including on the Metro-North and Long Island Rail Road commuter-rail systems in …

Data breaches at restaurants and hotels are nothing new, but a just-out report from Verizon Communications Inc. shows how extensively the hospitality industry gets hit by hackers. New York City-based Verizon, which besides telecommunications has a large business in investigating data breaches, says in its latest annual breach study that …