Consulting firm The Strawhecker Group is out with its 2016 rankings of U.S. merchant acquirers, and they show that 240 acquirers and independent sales organizations processed more than $5 trillion in payment volume. The 10 biggest acquirers accounted for 80% of that volume. Topping the list is JPMorgan Chase & …

Co-Op Financial Services, the big credit-union service organization based in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., announced Monday that it had acquired Des Moines, Iowa-based payment processor TMG for $100 million. Co-Op had been the minority owner of TMG, until recently known as The Members Group, and bought out the rest of the …

In the United States, contactless payments are virtually synonymous with mobile payments. In other countries, contactless payments usually mean tap-and-go transactions with a plastic debit or credit card. In the United Kingdom, for example, spending on contactless cards reached a record £3.4 billion ($4.2 billion at current exchange rates) in …

While independent sales organizations often say they want to compete on more than just price, pricing remains the main sales tool for many. But a growing number of ISOs and merchant acquirers are looking to add non-processing components to their product line-ups to attract and retain merchants. Several providers of …

The migration of payment card fraud to the Internet in the wake of EMV chip cards coming to the point of sale is not new, but new findings from a company that specializes in card-not-present risk control and chargeback reduction provide insights on the breadth of the problem and offer …

The name might evoke yawns, but the messaging standard known as ISO 20022 will be playing an increasingly important role in electronic payments in the future. The standard goes beyond bare-bones data related to a payment to facilitate the exchange of more information. The Federal Reserve Banks are encouraging more …

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has provided additional details about evaluating applications for its proposed limited-purpose national bank charter for financial-technology companies, but voices critical of the charter are growing louder. The OCC, a unit of the U.S. Treasury Department that regulates national banks, first proposed the …

Euronet Worldwide Inc., owner of the Ria money-transfer service, early Tuesday announced a $1 billion bid to acquire Dallas-based MoneyGram International Inc. Euronet’s unexpected bid casts a cloud of uncertainty over the $880 million buyout offer China-based Ant Financial Services Group submitted for MoneyGram in January. Leawood, Kan.-based Euronet called …

Ant Financial Services Group issued its first comments late Tuesday on Euronet Worldwide Inc.’s surprise $1 billion bid earlier in the day for MoneyGram International Inc., the wire-transfer provider for which Ant Financial bid $880 million in January. “Ant Financial remains highly committed to the consummation of our merger with …

The week started out on a fusion theme when a private-equity firm said it would buy Canadian payments and financial software developer DH Corp. for C$4.8 billion ($3.6 billion) and merge it with one of its portfolio companies, United Kingdom-based Misys, a software provider for retail and corporate banking. Also …