An unlikely panelist showed up Wednesday at the Fall 2015 Mobile Payments Conference in Chicago: country music singer and songwriter Rick Monroe, who urged his listeners to get down and get to work on apps that can help musicians sell songs and merchandise. “Mobile has become a way for artists …

With much of its international business under pressure because of the strong U.S. dollar and weak economies in many countries, VeriFone Systems Inc.’s North America region once again proved to be the point-of-sale hardware and payments software provider’s saving grace. Powered by the U.S. conversion to EMV chip card payments, …

A new update of a list detailing where public authorities have intervened in payment card merchant pricing and rules shows only one country, Malaysia, was added over the past year, but authorities took new regulatory measures in places on the predecessor list, particularly the European Union and the United States. …

Payment processor First Data Corp. on Tuesday named a big cast of underwriters for its planned initial public offering of stock. Meanwhile, a German processor reportedly is joining private-equity firms in making a play for United Kingdom-based Worldpay Ltd., which is one of the world’s largest merchant acquirers and has …

While many payments firms have complained about the expensive and time-consuming process of getting state money-transmitter licenses, and, more recently, of potentially needing licenses to operate virtual currencies, the regulatory pendulum occasionally swings the other way. Late last month, Illinois quietly dropped a 2013 cease-and-desist order against merchant processor Square …

Many news accounts of PayPal Holdings Inc.’s spinoff from parent company eBay Inc. noted that PayPal’s market capitalization was in the $50 billion range, but few provided context on where that placed the company among its publicly traded peers. Turns out, PayPal instantly became the fourth-largest payments player, trailing only …

A new survey shows users of remote deposit capture overwhelmingly say the benefits of the service far outweigh its risks and costs. Other recent surveys by RemoteDepositCapture.com, a news and information clearinghouse, reveal the cost benefits users assign to the service and show that many users take weeks to destroy …

A federal judge on Tuesday nullified a pending settlement between American Express Co. and merchants in a class-action lawsuit over AmEx’s anti-steering rules because of improper conduct by a co-lead attorney for the merchants. The decision immediately cast a shadow over the $5.7 billion settlement Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. …

A federal appellate court on Tuesday reinstated a proposed class-action lawsuit over ATM pricing rules that independent ATM operators and consumers filed against Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. in 2011 but a district court dismissed in 2013. The ruling originated with three lawsuits filed by the National ATM Council Inc., …

By John Stewart It is a commonplace notion that unicorns are to be encountered only in myth. But in the world of venture capital, they are becoming increasingly numerous. While it was once considered extremely rare for a privately held startup to achieve a $1 billion-plus valuation, there are now …