Acquiring

Thales’s proposed all-cash acquisition of rival Gemalto received merger-control regulatory clearance by the European Commission. Effective immediately, the clearance is conditioned on Thales’s agreement to divest its general-purpose hardware security modules business worldwide. The deal still must clear regulatory hurdles in five other countries, including the United States. Bluefin Payment …

Cloud-based point-of-sale system maker ShopKeep said it closed a $65 million funding round, led by Tribeca Venture Partners, that it will use for expansion and growth purposes. New investors include First Data Corp. and Salesforce Ventures. A staff report released by Republicans on the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform …

In an escalation of its bidding war for remote deposit capture software provider Mitek Systems Inc., business-software firm ASG Technologies, a portfolio company of the hedge fund Elliott Management Corp., upped its unsolicited buyout offer from $10 per Mitek share to $11.50 in cash. ASG also said there are no …

UATP, an airline-owned payment network, said it is adding Chase Pay to its network, a move that should make it easier for airlines to accept JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Chase Pay in their apps and Web sites. NCR Corp. completed its $184 million acquisition of merchant processor JetPay Corp. Payments …

In a vast and rapidly growing commercial card market, virtual cards are grabbing dollar-volume share and are poised to dominate business-to-business card payments, according to research from Accenture Payments. Corporate cards, purchasing cards, and virtual cards will account for $523 billion in U.S. commercial card volume, up 10% from 2017, …

OnDeck Capital Inc. said it will combine its Canadian lending operations with Evolocity Financial Group, a Montreal-based online small-business lender. The combined entity will be branded OnDeck Canada. Terms were not disclosed. Mobile-payments specialist Glance Technologies Inc. announced a referral agreement for cash advances with Merchant Advance Capital L.P. Hackers …

Merchants using the point-of-sale system from National Retail Solutions Inc. soon will have the ability to use a potentially crime-thwarting value-add feature. The Newark, N.J.-based company is adding a silent alarm feature to its POS system. Expected to be available by the end of the first quarter, the feature involves …

Citing its potential effects on payments-market competition, the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority has now ordered an in-depth review of PayPal Holdings Inc.’s acquisition of Sweden-based processor iZettle AB. A PayPal spokesperson told Reuters the company is working with the CMA and plans to demonstrate the market will remain …

Shares of transaction-processing companies lost ground in November for the second month in a row, but the decline wasn’t nearly as great as October’s 10% plunge, according to new data from Barrington Research Associates Inc. The Chicago-based investment firm says share prices of a group of 26 publicly traded transaction …

European merchants could see their costs to accept Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. payment cards issued outside of Europe decline by 40% under separate proposals submitted by the two leading card networks to settle competition concerns raised by European Union antitrust authorities. The European Commission, the administrative arm of the …