Acquiring

• Mastercard Inc. and investor and philanthropist George Soros announced plans “to explore private-sector solutions to societal challenges” by possibly creating a so-called social enterprise called Humanity Ventures that will apply commercial strategies to address such problems as joblessness and lack of access to health care and education. Soros might …

The Electronic Transactions Association went on record Tuesday supporting the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s proposed limited-purpose national bank charter for financial technology companies, but a national trade group of small banks “expressed strong concerns” about the idea. The opinions expressed by the ETA and the Independent Community …

• The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority has accepted in principle a number of proposals Mastercard Inc. has made to dispel concerns the agency expressed earlier this month about the planned $920 million merger of Mastercard and the U.K.-based payments-technology firm VocaLink. The CMA had been concerned that the merger would hand Mastercard …

Payments provider Clearent LLC is buying Payment Alliance International’s merchant-services division, which serves more than 17,000 merchants, for an undisclosed amount, Clearent announced Wednesday. The deal adds $4.2 billion in processing volume to Clearent, pushing the combined entity’s total processing volume to $14 billion and its total number of merchants …

• Merchant processor iPayment Inc., along with its parent company iPayment Holdings Inc., announced a refinancing with holders of its senior secured notes that company officials say should result in a “substantial deleveraging” of the company and enable it to add services and products. • Equinox Payments LLC said it supports Android Pay …

Point-of-sale terminal maker Ingenico Group is among many payments companies making announcements Monday at the National Retail Federation’s annual Big Show in New York City. France-based Ingenico says its ePayments division and its research arm Ingenico Labs now offer payment-enabled messaging bots for e-commerce merchants. Bots are an artificial intelligence …

The announcements about new point-of-sale and mobile-payment systems and related services came fast and furious Monday at the National Retail Federation’s annual Big Show underway in New York City. • Samsung Electronics America, Inc. and independent sales organization Total Merchant Services Inc. announced the availability of TMS’s Groovv POS Flex, …

• Payment technology provider MagTek Inc. introduced tDynamo, a compact terminal that accepts chip and magnetic-stripe payment cards as well as contactless transactions in either fixed or mobile configurations. • USA Technologies Inc. said its ePort Connect Platform’s G0-S series has been certified on the Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network. USAT’s ePort devices …

Contactless cards were tried in the U.S. years ago and soon fell by the wayside, giving the technology a black eye among issuers. Now a report released Monday in the U.K., where contactless is catching on fast, could revive hopes for the technology. Some 325 million debit and credit card …

First Data Corp.’s newest division, the Integrated Solutions Group, is designed to entice software developers to create tools that hook into the giant processor’s payments platform. Announced Friday, the division is meant to foster ties between the Atlanta-based processor and independent software vendors, value-added resellers, software developers, and systems integrators. …