Mergers & Acquisitions

October, 2020

• 28 October

  Visa Looks for Brighter Skies in 2021 As It Emerges From a Year Darkened by Covid’s Impact

  

  Visa Inc. may be bidding good riddance to a Covid-haunted fiscal 2020, but the giant payments network made it plain Wednesday afternoon it is looking forward to a very different fiscal 2021. “The pandemic is still with us,” noted Vasant Prabhu, the company’s chief financial officer, but “fiscal year 2021 …
• 28 October

  Mastercard’s Top Brass Points to Signs of a Recovery But Warns of Recent Restrictions

  

  As were all payments networks, Mastercard Inc. was hammered by the novel coronavirus pandemic, but its leaders Wednesday morning pointed to a tentative recovery. “Overall, we see signs of improvement, but we’re not out of the woods yet,” noted Ajay Banga, Mastercard’s outgoing chief executive, during a conference call with …
• 28 October

  Visa To Acquire YellowPepper USA and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 10/28/20

  

  Visa Inc. has agreed to acquire YellowPepper USA Inc., whose technology supports financial institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean in launching cards and other financial services. Terms of the transaction, which is expected to close in the next few weeks, were not announced.Celero Commerce said it will acquire TransNational Payments. Celero …
• 27 October

  Buoyed by Merchant Acceptance, Fiserv Comes Close to Returning to Pre-Covid Levels

  Led by its merchant-acquiring unit, Fiserv Inc. in the quarter ended Sept. 30 continued its rebound from the wallop it took from Covid-19. The Brookfield, Wis.-based company reported total revenue, adjusted for its First Data Corp. acquisition in July 2019, of $3.59 billion for the quarter, down a slight 1% …
• 26 October

  USAT Completes EMV Advance and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 10/26/20

  

  USA Technologies Inc., a payments-technology provider for the vending-machine business, announced it has completed the introduction of EMV and contactless EMV acceptance capability for its ePort G10-Chip reader line. The enhancement process was launched in February.The Western Union Co. said it now has added bank accounts, wallets, and cards to its …
• 23 October

  Gmail Gaining Shopping and Purchasing Capabilities and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 10/23/20

  

  Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit announced it is enabling shopping and purchasing within its Gmail email service via an agreement with Skipify Inc., a payments provider that relies on artificial intelligence technology.North Lane Technologies, formerly Wirecard North America Inc., and daVinci Payments have banded together to create Syncapay Inc., a holding company for payment-technology …
• 23 October

  COMMENTARY: Why Attrition Is No Longer a Core Metric for Valuing Merchant Portfolios

  

  Strange times. Seemingly overnight, one of the most durable and heavily weighted key performance indicators (KPIs) for the quality and valuation of traditional, brick-and-mortar merchant-acquiring portfolios has lost its salience. Its meaningfulness has gone from a primary driver of value to a mere footnote.  Not everyone will agree. But when …
• 22 October

  Discover Volume up 11% and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 10/22/20

  

  Discover Financial Services reported its payment-services volume totaled $69.7 billion in the third quarter, up 11% year-over-year. Volume on the Pulse debit network increased 16% to $55 billion owing to larger average spending due to the pandemic and to the lift from stimulus funds.Payments provider PaymentCloud Inc. said it acquired contactless technology startup …
• 21 October

  PayPal Dips into Crypto and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 10/21/20

  

  PayPal Holdings Inc. announced a service that allows account holders to buy, hold, and sell cryptocurrency directly from their account. The company also said it will make cryptocurrency available as a funding source for purchases at the 26 million merchants worldwide that accept PayPal.Payments provider FIS Inc. said it added pharmacy chain Walgreens …
• 20 October

  Graylin’s and Wallner’s New Venture and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 10/20/20

  

  Payments industry veterans Will Graylin and George Wallner launched a fundraising campaign on Indiegogo for OV Valet, their new company that wants to offer Superkey, a fob that uses near-field communication and magnetic secure transmission technology, to enable tap-and-pay payments.Payments-technology provider VoPay International Inc. said it is working with Visa Inc. to integrate the …