A group of 16 European banks said they plan to launch a “truly European” unified payments system by 2022 that would be an alternative to Visa and Mastercard, Reuters reported.The slowdown in in-store shopping due to the Covid-19 pandemic has caused some stores to run out of coins; most recently big-box grocery chain …

The FIS-Worldpay merger not only created a processing behemoth, it set the stage for an operation with diverse revenue streams that can withstand shocks like Covid-19. A year later, the FIS/Worldpay merger—one of three giant processor combinations in 2019—appears to be reaping the promised benefits. If a company that created …

A deadly disease has proven a boon for some key trends while threatening cash and opening new avenues for fraud. An industry whose closest familiarity with viruses has come from the kind that infects computers has for most of this year had to contend with a pathogen that has sickened …

The fallout from the Wirecard AG financial scandal has hit the U.S. market as the processor’s North American unit announced late Monday it is seeking a buyer. Wirecard North America Inc., based in Conshohocken, Pa., said it has engaged an unnamed investment bank to assist in the transaction. In the …

Website-creation platform Wix.com Ltd. launched its e-commerce service that offers Wix Payments, a payment-processing service.The Regal movie-theater chain, a unit of Cineworld Group, said it will reopen its 541 U.S. theaters July 31 and will implement contactless payments along with other measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19.Marqeta Inc. said it will support issuance …

One of the most aggressive—and worrisome—central bank digital currency models is a proposal from law professors Morgan Ricks and John Crawford and lawyer and former regulator Lev Menand that the Fed provide direct banking “FedAccounts” to consumers and businesses. It’s intended to improve payments efficiency and reduce the number of …

Digital fiat currencies are coming. Bitcoin and the more than 5,000 cryptocurrencies it inspired have ignited the interest of the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the Peoples Bank of China, as well as that of private-sector players like Visa and Facebook, in digital currencies tied to dollars, euros, …

Mastercard Inc. announced Amazon.com Inc. will start using tokens to replace actual customer card data throughout 2020. Tokenization replaces actual card data with data strings that are meaningless to outside parties. The process also permits automatic credential updating when cards expire.Payments card standards body EMVCo made it official—consumer-facing online-payment checkout options based on …

Merchant processor Square Inc. said that as of June 10 its Square Capital service had facilitated more than $820 million in Paycheck Protection Program loans to 76,000 small businesses since April 29. PPP loans are part of the federal government’s stimulus program to combat the economic downturn caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.In …

JotForm, a developer of online forms for businesses, announced an integration with the PayPal Commerce Platform allowing clients to accept credit card payments, transfers between PayPal accounts, and PayPal Credit financing options.Corporate-payments software provider Coupa Software Inc. said it has acquired Bellin Group, a vendor of treasury-management technology. Terms were not announced.With the popularity …