Person-to-Person Payments

Zelle, the peer-to-peer payments service, had a banner 2018 with $119 billion in payments on 433 million transactions processed via its network of banks. That is a 58.7% increase in payments from 2017’s total of $75 billion and a 75.3% increase in transaction volume from 247 million. The increases were …

In a stunning announcement that surprised many observers, Fiserv Inc. said Wednesday morning it has struck a deal to acquire First Data Corp. with what the parties say will be the biggest ever such transaction in the payments and financial-technology businesses. The all-stock deal, expected to close in the third …

Bank of America Corp. reported its customers using the Zelle person-to-person payment network totaled 4.9 million in 2018’s fourth quarter, up by a factor of 2.4 since Zelle’s June 2017 launch. Zelle volume at BofA for the quarter totaled $14 billion on 51.6 million transactions, up from $7 billion on …

TD Ameritrade announced individual investors can instantly fund a brokerage account using Apple Pay through Apple Business Chat. The capability means investors can use a debit card to deposit up to $10,000 per day via Apple Pay, though the limit may vary by bank. The service is much quicker than …

Fraud, acquisitions, and interchange dominated the top 10 list of news articles posted to DigitalTransactions.net in 2018. Starting with a $6.2 billion pact between Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc., on one hand, and defendant banks, on the other, stemming from 13-year-old litigation over credit card interchange, to American Express Co.’s …

An affiliate of Elliott Management Corp., a hedge fund that is trying to acquire remote deposit capture software provider Mitek Systems Inc. through a portfolio company, plans to nominate seven director candidates at Mitek’s 2019 shareholder meeting, Mitek reported in a regulatory filing. The meeting date and location hasn’t been …

All but two of 27 bank mobile apps examined in a new S&P Global Inc. study offer person-to-person payments and another bank will soon add the feature to its app. But less than a third of the apps support cardless ATM transactions. The study by New York City-based S&P Global’s …

The Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with two defendants accused of laundering nearly $6 million in credit card charges through fraudulent merchant accounts. Lightspeed, developer of a cloud-based point-of-sale system, released Lightspeed Loyalty, a service that offers merchants a rewards program, automated marketing, customer data reporting, and, for restaurants, …

The prognostications for 2019 are starting to roll in, and if at least one comes true, we’ll see business-to-business transactions driving the growth of faster-payment systems. And smart phones might actually gain some discernible traction at the point of sale. The predictions come from the big accounting and consulting firm …

Thales’s proposed all-cash acquisition of rival Gemalto received merger-control regulatory clearance by the European Commission. Effective immediately, the clearance is conditioned on Thales’s agreement to divest its general-purpose hardware security modules business worldwide. The deal still must clear regulatory hurdles in five other countries, including the United States. Bluefin Payment …