Acquiring

After a lull of more than five months, merchant processor Square Inc. is resuming its attempt to obtain a bank charter. A spokesperson for San Francisco-based Square confirmed Wednesday morning that the company would refile its application the same day. Square in September 2017 filed for an industrial-bank charter from …

E-commerce technology provider 3dcart said its merchants can now offer Bread, an online financing service for consumer purchases, to their shoppers. Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) said consumers can redeem rewards points instantly at the pump at approximately 13,400 Shell stations nationwide through a new agreement between FIS and …

Atom Tickets released a skill for Amazon Alexa, the retailer’s voice-assistant technology. Users can learn what movies are playing nearby and buy tickets using voice commands. The skill is integrated with Amazon Pay. Extend, a digital distribution platform for credit cards, registered with the Visa Ready program for business solutions, …

Oversight of payment-processing software will change under detailed plans announced by the PCI Security Standards Council. In related news, the EMVCo standards body announced an update to its 3-D Secure standard for protecting card-not-present transactions. In a Friday blog post, the PCI Council said its pending PCI Secure Software Standard …

Technology provider Nxt-ID Inc. said its planned spinoff of its payment assets into an independent, publicly traded company has been delayed until the first quarter of 2019 owing to the company’s inability to come to terms with its primary lender, which holds security interests in the assets targeted for the …

In 2018, the acceptance of virtual cards, also known as v-cards, by small-to-midsize businesses (SMBs) increased significantly as suppliers embraced the improved security and convenience of this digital payment method over paper checks. Still, making the leap to fully automated payments remained a challenge for most within this market segment. …

An affiliate of Elliott Management Corp., a hedge fund that is trying to acquire remote deposit capture software provider Mitek Systems Inc. through a portfolio company, plans to nominate seven director candidates at Mitek’s 2019 shareholder meeting, Mitek reported in a regulatory filing. The meeting date and location hasn’t been …

A number of U.S. payments providers have expanded overseas in recent years, and now more may have an incentive to do so if recent research showing robust growth in merchant acceptance is any indication. The number of physical stores or outlets accepting payment cards worldwide reached 69.2 million last year, …

The Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with two defendants accused of laundering nearly $6 million in credit card charges through fraudulent merchant accounts. Lightspeed, developer of a cloud-based point-of-sale system, released Lightspeed Loyalty, a service that offers merchants a rewards program, automated marketing, customer data reporting, and, for restaurants, …

The prognostications for 2019 are starting to roll in, and if at least one comes true, we’ll see business-to-business transactions driving the growth of faster-payment systems. And smart phones might actually gain some discernible traction at the point of sale. The predictions come from the big accounting and consulting firm …