Acquiring

• The Federal Trade Commission is investigating PayPal Holdings Inc.’s popular Venmo mobile person-to-person payments service for possible “deceptive or unfair practices,” PayPal reported in a regulatory filing. PayPal said it received a so-called civil investigative demand March 28 from the FTC for documents and answers to written questions about …

The Electronic Transactions Association, a trade group based in Washington, D.C., that represents the merchant-services industry, has opened an office in San Francisco, its first outside of the nation’s capital. The move is indicative of Silicon Valley’s growing presence within the payments industry and, specifically, within merchant services, says Jason …

It may have started with the likes of PayPal Holdings Inc. and Square Inc., but it isn’t stopping there. Having made their mark in merchant processing, high-tech payments firms are increasingly turning their attention to the business of offering funding to the merchants they serve. The move is bringing them …

• Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook reported at the company’s latest quarterly earnings call that the Apple Pay contactless mobile-payment service “is growing at a tremendous rate” and has more than five times the transaction volume it had a year ago, but he didn’t give numbers. The service, which is …

When it comes to mobile payments, few operators can equal PayPal Holdings Inc., a fact the company underlined on Wednesday when it reported mobile volume reached $21 billion in the first quarter, up fully 54% year-over-year. But casting a shadow over the good news was a continuing downward trend in …

• The PCI Security Standards Council said it will publish version 3.2 of the Payment Card Industry data-security standard this Thursday. • Ziosk LLC, a provider of tablets for at-table payment in restaurants, announced deals with several entertainment providers for new content on its installed base of 170,000 devices. • …

Despite 7% transaction growth, First Data Corp. on Monday reported that revenue in the company’s North American merchant-processing business declined 2% in the first quarter. In an early-morning conference call with analysts, First Data executives several times blamed attrition among small and mid-sized North American businesses, or SMBs, in its …

• Global Payments Inc.’s $4.3 billion acquisition of processor Heartland Payment Systems Inc. closed Monday, Global Payments said. The deal, announced in December, gives the combined company more than 8,500 employees and provides services to almost 2.5 million merchants around the world. • Processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) renewed …

First Data Corp. is taking its Clover brand, known until now as a mobile point-of-sale service, to the Web with a launch May 3 of the Clover Online Store. Announced Wednesday at Transact16, the Electronic Transactions Association’s annual conference in Las Vegas, the service enables merchants to set up an …

• SuperCom Ltd., an Israel-based identity-verification company, bought PowaPOS, the tablet-based point-of-sale unit of Powa Technologies Ltd., a commerce company that floundered. Powa’s two other units, PowaWeb and PowaTag, already have been sold. • American Express Co. reported $176.3 billion in U.S. card-billed business during the first quarter, up 4% from a …