The Federal Trade Commission this week announced a settlement with an independent sales organization that processed $80 million in payments for “My Online Business Education,” or MOBE, a business-coaching and investment opportunity the FTC deemed fraudulent and shut down in 2018. Under an order and permanent injunction in U.S. District Court …

U.S. payment volume growth was still in negative territory in May thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, but the picture was brighter than it was in April, Visa Inc. reported late Monday. “In May, total U.S. payments volume declined 5% year-over-year, a 13 percentage point (ppt) improvement over April,” Visa said …

Shift4 Payments Inc.’s pending initial public offering took a step forward Monday when the merchant processor filed an amended prospectus stating it plans to sell 15 million shares of common stock at a range of $19 to $21 per share. At the maximum price, the sale would yield $315 million …

Mobile devices have captured more than 50% of online purchase transactions in many large countries, according to new research findings from comScore Inc. Mobile wallets, however, still account for only a minority of total mobile purchases. Reston, Va.-based comScore, which researches Internet usage, says mobile’s share of online transactions rose …

Four years after the EMV chip card standard became the law of the U.S. payments land, the number of credit and debit cards with an EMV chip now exceeds 1 billion, and 63% of U.S. card-present transactions in 2019 involved an EMV card being read by an EMV-capable terminal, up …

After years of working with Internet firms and payments and tech companies to develop its authentication standards, the Fast IDentity Online (FIDO) Alliance on Wednesday unveiled a Web site to familiarize consumers with its work and a symbol that indicates a Web site or device is using its technology. The …

Led by the removal of 30,000 ATMs in China, the number of ATMs worldwide fell by 15,000 units, or 0.5%, in 2019 to 3.23 million machines from 3.25 million in 2018, according to new findings from London-based research firm RBR. The United States and Canada also saw declines in their …

A new report from CardFlight Inc., a point-of-sale technology provider serving more than 60,000 small businesses through its SwipeSimple service, shows merchant activity climbing back to just about where it was in early March when the Covid-19 outbreak began to hit the economy hard. Total sales in the SwipeSimple merchant …

Fiserv Inc. and the former head of an independent sales organization will pay $40.2 million to settle charges brought by the Federal Trade Commission stemming from alleged illegal actions committed by the ISO from 2012 to 2014 while it obtained processing services from First Data Merchant Services, whose parent company …

With its merchant business under pressure because of the coronavirus pandemic, Square Inc. is yet again spying new opportunities for its consumer-facing Cash App, whose core feature is person-to-person payments. This time, Square is rolling out regularly scheduled purchases of Bitcoin and stocks for Cash App users. Square chief executive …