Advent International, a private-equity firm with considerable experience in the payments space, announced Friday that it had acquired a majority stake in the big independent sales organization and payment processor Clearent LLC and merged it with FieldEdge, an independent software vendor serving home-services contractors. Advent had also bought FieldEdge. Financial …

The Federal Reserve announced Thursday that work began this month on a new study to measure fraud and associated costs to the U.S. payments system as well as identify fraud’s causes and contributing factors. After a competitive bidding process, the central bank hired Boston-based The Boston Consulting Group to do …

In a mashup of the Internet of things and cryptocurrency, authentication and data-security firm WiseKey International Holding Ltd. announced Thursday that it has developed a payment service for IoT-connected devices and its own WiseCoin. Geneva, Switzerland-based WiseKey said it has tested the system, dubbed IoT CryptoCurrency Smart Payment, on a …

Canadians are now quite comfortable with contactless payments, but they view other new payment forms cautiously, according to new findings from Visa Inc.’s Canadian unit. Some 52% of 1,000 adults polled in February for Toronto-based Visa Canada said they are regular users of contactless cards. Also, 80% of respondents said …

Best known for serving prepaid card providers, Galileo Processing says it is rapidly expanding into other parts of the electronic-payments industry with new services, including application programming interfaces supporting cryptocurrency transactions. Salt Lake City, Utah-based Galileo declined to disclose actual numbers, but said earlier this week that it posted a …

Denizen Financial Inc., a San Francisco-based startup backed by one of Spain’s biggest banks, has created what it calls “the first true global, borderless account” that allows customers to receive money in one country and pay it out in another while avoiding international transfer fees and foreign-exchange fees. Denizen says …

With about 18 months of experience with contactless debit cards under its belt, TCF Financial Corp. says it’s all-in for so-called dual-interface cards and mobile payments as the number of U.S. merchant locations accepting contactless payments continues to grow. The Wayzata, Minn.-based company’s TCF Bank began supporting the major mobile …

Another day, another data breach. But each one has lessons for the payments industry, and that includes the breach disclosed Tuesday by online travel-services provider Expedia Inc.’s Orbitz subsidiary. Hackers accessed one of Orbitz’s older systems and thereby may have exposed 880,000 payment card numbers on file, according to press …

PayPal Holdings Inc.’s Pay After Delivery service will end April 19 for U.S. buyers. San Jose, Calif.-based PayPal included notice of the discontinuance in recent emails to account holders about the latest changes to its policies, and through a posting on the PayPal Web site. With Pay After Delivery, which …

With the third and final phase of same-day automated clearing house payment processing now in effect, ACH governing body NACHA is turning its attention to improving the program through higher transaction limits, adding a later processing window, and other changes. Same-day ACH transactions currently are capped at $25,000. Herndon, Va.-based …