Law and Regulation

Note to payments-company owners: now just might be the right time to sell. Buyers in 2019 have paid more for firms in the payment-tech space since at least 2010, according to a new analysis by 451 Research of more than 1,100 deals over nearly a decade. The median price to …

Facing major consolidation among rival processors. Global Payments Inc. and Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) made it official Tuesday they are merging in an all-stock deal that values TSYS at $21.5 billion and will leave Global with 52% of the combined entity. The acquisition is expected to close in the …

The Electronic Transactions Association sent letters to Congress and the Canadian Parliament urging lawmakers to ratify the pending U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA) that would replace the North American Free Trade Agreement. Among other things, the USMCA reflects “the importance of data, technology, and innovation,” and would bar any country from …

A five-year-old lawsuit brought by payday lenders against federal banking regulators over the government’s controversial Operation Choke Point ended with a settlement this week. Advance America, Cash Advance Centers Inc. (Advance America), and Check Into Cash had sued the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of the Comptroller of …

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 …

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 …

A federal judge has ordered the two main perpetrators of what the Federal Trade Commission calls the “massive Pointbreak Media robocall scheme,” part of which involved remotely created checks, to pay $3.37 million to the FTC, the agency announced this week. U.S. District Court Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga in Miami …

Processor Adyen N.V. said ride-share service Uber will use Adyen’s 3-D Secure service online and in-app. 3-D Secure is an online authentication standard that, now in its second iteration, uses multiple bits of data to verify elements of a transaction. Unlike the first version, 3-D Secure 2 aims to be …

POSaBIT, a point-of-sale services provider for cannabis retailers, said an analysis of “hundreds of thousands” of transactions at more than 120 California, Washington, and Colorado stores found that consumers belonging to a cannabis retailer’s loyalty rewards program had a 28% higher average ticket value and visited the store more frequently …

Transaction and dollar volume for Priority Technology Holdings Inc. managed to grow in the first quarter despite the downsizing of the merchant processor’s formerly large online subscription-billing business. Alpharetta, Ga.-based Priority reported Monday that merchant bank card processing volume rose 8.8% to $9.9 billion versus $9.1 billion in 2018’s first …