News

February, 2020

• 14 February

  Checks’ Last Bastions Include Older Consumers, Businesses, and Bill Payments

  

  The decline of checks over recent decades is a well-known story, but there were still 14.5 billion check payments in 2018, according to Federal Reserve research. So just who’s still writing checks, and for what kinds of payments? “All things being equal, older, low-income, non-minority group members are more likely …
• 14 February

  Ingenico Names New North America Executive and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 2/14/20

  

  Ingenico Group S.A. named Peter Stewart executive vice president of Ingenico North America. Stewart has more than 25 years of experience in the technology industry. A specialist in point-of-sale equipment and processing, Ingenico Group has agreed to be acquired by processor Worldline S.A. in an $8.6 billion deal.CHR Corp., which does business under …
• 13 February

  WEX’s Benefits and Corporate-Services Units Growing Faster Than Fleet Services

  

  Best known for its big fleet-fueling card business, WEX Inc. lately is getting stronger growth from its two other segments, health-care and employee benefits and corporate and travel services. WEX reported Thursday that total fourth-quarter purchase volume grew 8.4% to $20.1 billion from $18.5 billion a year earlier. Portland, Maine-based …
• 13 February

  With Expanded Merchant Business Thanks to Worldpay, FIS Seeks to Exploit Its Acquiring Chops

  

  When Fidelity National Information Services Inc. closed on its $43 billion acquisition of Worldpay Inc. last summer, the payments industry knew the massive deal would boost FIS instantly into the top ranks of global merchant processors. On Thursday, the company let the world know just how big its position in …
• 13 February

  WooCommerce Adds CBD-Specific Features and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 2/13/20

  

  E-commerce platform WooCommerce said it is offering CBD-selling merchants new services for monitoring security issues, printing shipping labels, and automatic tax calculation.Acadia POS and merchant-services provider GCG Consulting Inc. said they handled nearly 50,000 transactions on 77 PAX Technology point-of-sale devices at the recent Waste Management Phoenix Open.Business-payments firm Biller Genie said its clients are …
• 12 February

  The New Global Payments Looks to Value to Offset Impending Visa Rate Changes

  

  News of impending interchange-rate revisions from Visa Inc. may have roiled the payments industry, but for processing giants like Global Payments Inc., the impact will simply be business as usual. Top Global executives made that point crystal clear Wednesday. “We see these [rate changes] all the time. We have to accommodate …
• 12 February

  PayPal Funds Firearms Payments Research and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 2/12/20

  

  PayPal Holdings Inc. said it and the Center on Crime and Community Resilience at Northeastern University, along with the University of Chicago Crime Lab, formed a research project to examine payment methods used to finance illegally-sourced firearms with the goal of combatting the illegal sale of guns.Processor Fiserv Inc. announced its “Scan to …
• 11 February

  RILA Calls for Action on the Fed’s Debit Cap As Powell Testifies Before Congress

  

  Federal Reserve Board chairman Jerome Powell is testifying before Congress this week, and mixed in with questions and answers about interest rates, economic growth, and employment could be queries about when the Fed is going to update its cap on the fees issuers can charge for debit card transactions. At …
• 11 February

  Repay Expands Its Footprint with Ventanex Acquisition

  

  Payment-services provider Repay Holdings Corp. continued its run of acquisitions Monday when it announced it bought Ventanex for up to $50 million. Ventanex is an integrated-payments provider operating in consumer finance, especially mortgage-loan servicing, business-to-business health-care payments, and some other segments. Founded in 2012 and based in the Dallas suburb …
• 11 February

  Mastercard Forms a Joint Venture To Clear Domestic Chinese Card Transactions

  

  Mastercard Inc. is the latest U.S. payments company to take initial steps to operate in China with Tuesday’s announcement it will form a joint venture with NetsUnion Clearing Corp. to establish a domestic bank card clearing entity. The entity formed from the joint venture—Mastercard NUCC Information Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd.—received …