PayPal’s boss made a declaration Wednesday afternoon that may have been as much a warning to incumbent merchant acquirers as it was a promise to storefront merchants. Referring to PayPal’s new transaction pricing schedule, expected to go into effect Aug. 2, chief executive Dan Schulman made it clear PayPal will …

The big network executives aren’t quite ready to come right out and say it, but they’re certainly coming close to declaring their systems are just about at pre-pandemic performance levels. The latest example came Tuesday afternoon, when Visa Inc.’s results for the quarter ended June 30 prompted chairman and chief …

If there are lingering doubts about a big comeback for the big merchant processors, Fiserv Inc. may well have dispelled them early Tuesday with results showing 43% second-quarter growth in revenue year-over-year for the company’s merchant-acceptance unit. That performance comes on top of a near-doubling in payment volume for the …

Ever since the Covid pandemic set in more than a year ago, the payments industry has been abuzz with talk about its various impacts on merchant acceptance. What hasn’t received as much attention is how the pandemic has affected merchant acquiring. It turns out processors and independent sales organizations have …

American Express Co. posted second-quarter numbers Friday indicating the card giant is very nearly back to its pre-pandemic performance and reflecting a steady recovery from the travel restrictions that hampered the company for most of 2020. Driving the improved results was steady improvement in the company’s vital travel-and-entertainment business and …

Visa Inc. has been concentrating on building out its “network-of-networks” strategy for some time, and it’s latest move in that project came early Thursday with the news that it has agreed to acquire Currency Cloud Ltd., a London-based developer of application programming interfaces that can simplify cross-border payments. The deal values …

Card-based cryptocurrency transactions at the point of sale require conversion of the crypto assets to fiat currency for acceptance by the card networks. Now, the two top card networks are starting to change that. Mastercard Inc. early Tuesday said it will work with a pair of issuing banks and several …

For years, one of the fastest-growing trends in payments has been the idea of weaving transactional capability into business and consumer software. Now, one of the most prominent platforms in that business has launched a network to help connect software firms with payments companies and resources. “We’re doubling down on …

The buy now, pay later trend has gained enough steam that the major card networks can’t afford to ignore it. The latest evidence that the credit card giants want to hedge their bets came this week with the news that Discover Financial Services invested $30 million in Minneapolis-based Sezzle Inc., …

As banks, merchants, and fintechs scramble to win share in the payments business, they can easily lose sight of the fact that not all payments process properly. In fact, many don’t. Some two-thirds of organizations sustain more than 20,000 failed payments each day, while the toll taken globally by all …