Sweeping new executive hires at PayPal Holdings Inc., announced Wednesday, will help cement the 25-year-old payments company’s ambitious new direction under recently appointed chief executive Alex Chriss, observers say. “This is PayPal flexing who they are now. They want to be recognized by the world as an equal to Visa …

Paysafe Ltd.’s chef executive early Tuesday pointed to progress in the processor’s growth plan and outlined moves aimed at bolstering both the company’s product line and its stock. A new digital wallet aimed at U.S. small businesses will launch before year’s end, while the company’s board authorized a $50-million share-repurchase …

The payments business may be shying away from the mergers-and-acquisitions market for the time being, but that’s not a strategy Shift4 Payment Inc.’s boss is interested in imitating. “Now, there’s a general distaste for acquisitions. That’s not a mistake we’re going to make,” declared Shift4 chief executive Jared Isaacman early …

FIS Inc. is selling a majority stake in its massive Worldpay transaction-processing operation, but that doesn’t mean the company is ditching the payments business, its chief executive made plain early Tuesday. “We have not moved totally away from that,” Stephanie Ferris told equity analysts during an early-morning call to review …

Most new corporate chiefs keep a low profile for a time, perhaps tweaking their predecessors’ strategies but announcing few major changes. Not so Alex Chriss. PayPal Holdings Inc.’s new CEO, who took over Sept. 27 from long-time chief Dan Schulman, took the opportunity of his new company’s third-quarter earnings call …

The big Montreal-based payments processor Nuvei Corp. said early Wednesday it will process investments in private companies through KoreConX, a technology provider specializing in enabling such payments for individual investors. Interestingly, the arrangement includes the use of both card and account-to-account networks to route customers’ investments, with a $50 minimum, …

Observers of the payments industry who wonder how the Federal Reserve’s proposed rate reductions for debit card acceptance might be received by the nation’s biggest processors heard an unequivocal answer early Tuesday from at least one of them.  “Any time the cost of acceptance goes down, it’s a positive for …

The Federal Reserve Board’s proposal Wednesday to make a 31% reduction in the main component of its debit card interchange ceiling for large issuers touches on a longstanding sore point among merchants and has already sparked a spirited debate in the payments industry. Merchant groups, long riled by debit card …

The Federal Reserve Board is set to revisit its longstanding limit on debit card interchange on Wednesday, and most observers expect the Fed to lower it. But ask Visa Inc. about the matter—as analysts did Tuesday afternoon during the network’s September-quarter earnings call—and its top executives outwardly at least profess …

Numbers from Fiserv Inc. early Tuesday indicate the big processor’s payments and network business for financial institutions is growing at a steady clip, with September-quarter revenue in that business up 5% year-over-year, to $1.71 billion in volume. Riding that wave, the company’s top brass late Monday announced a deal with …