Person-to-Person Payments

Fiserv Inc. has been an acquisitive company since its merger in 2019 with First Data Corp., and on Tuesday its top management said its latest acquisition will accelerate the company’s penetration of the growing market for digital-banking services provided not locally but through a cloud configuration. The $650-million deal for …

If the nation’s second-largest bank is any indication, total consumer payments are booming despite the pandemic, while digital alternatives are gaining ground fast, in part because of the pandemic. Bank of America Corp. reported early Monday spending by consumer customers in January rose 17% compared to January last year, resulting …

Spurred by rising demand from consumers and businesses alike for real-time digital payments, the peer-to-peer payments service Zelle continued to post strong double-digit growth in transactions and dollar volume in 2021. The bank-owned network, operated by Early Warning Services LLC, reported its latest results early Wednesday. Consumers and businesses sent …

As all payments companies know, some active accounts are more active than others. On Tuesday, PayPal Holdings Inc.’s top executives made it plain the company’s 2022 priority is to emphasize—and pour money into promoting—accountholder activity. “The shift is, we’re not going to throw marketing dollars at low-value customers coming in,” …

Top executives at Mastercard Inc. made it plain early Thursday the card network is determined to develop its account-to-account payment capabilities, while maintaining its distance from the dispute between its rival Visa Inc. and the e-commerce juggernaut Amazon.com Inc. over transaction pricing. “That’s fundamentally a question for Visa and Amazon,” …

On Tuesday, Plaid Inc., a bellwether of the open-banking movement, announced the availability of Plaid Portal US, a privacy tool for consumers using Plaid’s technology. The move comes as firms that connect financial-services providers with consumer-account data seek to help account owners manage how their information is distributed and used by …

Peer-to-peer money transfers have become a hyper-competitive market, driving even the best-known providers to seek out an edge. One such idea is to introduce a feature that lets senders add virtual gift-wrapping to payments they’re sending for special occasions, and on Thursday Venmo started rolling out just such a feature. …

Visa Inc.’s Back to Business study found 82% of small businesses plan to accept some form of digital payment in 2022, with 24% saying they plan to accept digital currencies like Bitcoin. The study canvassed 2,250 small-business owners and employees in nine countries, including the United States.Payments provider Lightspeed Commerce Inc. said its merchants …

Dismissed until recently by many in the payments industry as a fantasy, cryptocurrency as a payments medium continues to step toward center stage. Early Thursday, transaction processor Computer Services Inc. said it will work with NYDIG to help community banks support their customers who want to buy, sell, or hold …

The share of payments claimed by the automated clearing house rose faster in 2020 than the share for cards, while checks dropped markedly. All the while, the share of payments claimed by cards, which had been steadily on the rise for years, flattened out. And while contactless transactions did rise …