Transaction Processing

The PCI Security Standards Council named Lance J. Johnson to the executive director position. Johnson, who had been chief operating officer at Sequent Software Inc. for the past five years and spent 20 years at Visa Inc., replaces Stephen W. Orfei, the general manager who left earlier this year after …

The blockchain, mobile commerce, fraud, data breaches, and authentication were all hot payments topics in 2017. Expect that to continue into 2018 if the prognostications from several payments executives hold true. Much of their outlook centers on identity and authentication, especially as data breaches, large and small, continue to wreak …

The slow conversion of U.S. gasoline pumps from acceptance of only magnetic-stripe payment cards to EMV chip cards took a step forward Tuesday when payment technology provider NCR Corp. announced that a convenience store in upstate New York had completed its first outdoor EMV transaction using an NCR Optic upgrade …

Fit Pay Inc. will bring contactless-payment technology to wearable devices in Australia under an agreement with Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. Fit Pay is a unit of Florida-based NXT-ID Inc. Payments provider BlueSnap Inc. announced integrations with six software and services providers. Bluefin Payment Systems said it received …

The consolidation trend sweeping through the merchant-acquiring business made headlines again Monday morning with the news that Total System Services Inc. has agreed to buy Boston-based acquirer and technology provider Cayan LLC for approximately $1.05 billion in cash. The deal, which TSYS says it expects to close in the first …

Visa Inc. fired one of its most prominent executives, Jim McCarthy, executive vice president of innovation and strategic partnerships, Dec. 1 because of inappropriate relationships with female Visa employees, according to The Wall Street Journal; theJournal said Visa launched an investigation into McCarthy’s actions after CEO Alfred Kelly received an …

With Bitcoin priced near $18,000 Friday morning, and with futures markets already trading Bitcoin contracts or getting set to, investors in the digital currency are riding high. Consumers who want to use Bitcoin to buy things, though, face a market rife with volatility, slow transactions, and high costs. Bitcoin exchanges …

E-commerce platform Magento Inc. announced Instant Purchase, its new one-click payment feature that is now standard on its Magento Commerce system. For merchants, Instant Purchase offers a customizable button, a mobile-optimized process that Campbell, Calif.-based Magento says can reduce time-to-purchase by 90%, automatic shipping to the shopper’s default address, and …

Seven retail trade groups filed a joint amicus brief in a case now before the U.S. Supreme Court in which 11 states, led by Ohio, are appealing a U.S. Court of Appeals decision that upholds American Express Co.’s rule prohibiting merchants from steering customers to cards with lower acceptance costs. …

Subscription-management platform provider Recurly Inc. reported Thursday that it will use international multi-channel payments provider Adyen to further expand its business abroad. Founded in 2010, San Francisco-based Recurly already operates in 32 countries. Its customers are businesses that use recurring-revenue models, including media and publishing firms, software-as-a-service providers, and others. …