Credit Cards

Two powerful forces for making contactless cards a routine feature of daily life are acceptance by mass-transit systems and backing from the biggest issuers. On Wednesday, that combination came into focus with an announcement from Visa Inc. that starting May 31 users of the 20 million contactless credit cards JPMorgan …

Gilbarco Veeder-Root said Citgo Petroleum Corp. released its EMV-acceptance Passport software for Citgo retailers to use in the forecourt. With this release, Gilbarco Veeder-Root said more than 70% of its Passport customers have forecourt EMV software available as upgrades. At a payments conference sponsored by The American Bankers Association, the …

With momentum building to ban cashless stores, a rough consensus seems to be emerging that the United States will never have the cashless society futurists have predicted for decades as first cards, then e-commerce, and now mobile payments took root. To be sure, research released Tuesday by Square Inc. shows …

Contactless payments account for only an estimated low-single-digit share of U.S. general-purchase credit and debit card transactions, but contactless has a much greater share of payments in Canada and the United Kingdom, recently released data show. Canada’s largest merchant acquirer, Toronto-based Moneris Solutions Corp., says that in the first quarter …

Nxgen International Inc. acquired payments provider Payment Plus Inc. for an undisclosed amount. PPI will continue to grow its business in Kentucky and the Midwest, Nxgen said. Card-issuing platform Marqeta said it raised $260 million in Series E funding, placing the company’s value at almost $2 billion. Marqeta said the …

First-quarter growth in leading merchant processor First Data Corp.’s portfolios lagged growth posted in the preceding two quarters, but in a rare event physical merchants posted higher sales increases than their online counterparts. In its latest SpendTrend report, First Data says total payment card spending at U.S. merchants on its …

Sezzle, an online provider of installment loans to consumers, will use the Bank of America Merchant Services platform for digital card processing. Lavu, provider of mobile point-of-sale systems for restaurants and bars, certified three receipt printers from Epson America Inc. Lavu previously certified Epson’s Mobilink line of mobile receipt printers. …

JPMorgan Chase & Co. said it will buy InstaMed, a specialist in health-care payments. Terms were not disclosed. In April, InstaMed released an app with a blockchain prototype that it said will demonstrate how the technology can support adjudication and payment for insurance claims, patient billing, and patient payment. NLS …

Consumer-payments services are starting to garner attention among businesses, with 76% of banks having corporate customers asking for automated business-to-consumer payment services. That’s the word from Bottomline Technologies Inc. in its 2019 B2B Payments and Working Capital Management Strategies Survey, released this week. The survey of more than 300 financial …

Conventional wisdom in the payments business has been that the advent and spread of contactless cards would pave the way for wider use of mobile payments. But research released this week indicates that may not be the case. Indeed, far from serving as the training wheels for mobile payments, new …