Payment volume through biller-direct Web sites continues to grow at the expense of bank bill-pay sites, according to new findings from Boston-based Aite Group LLC. Some 73% of the online bill payments made by consumers in 2016 went through biller-direct sites, up from 62% in 2010, according to Aite. Meanwhile, …

Payment gateway Merchant Link said the Agilsys rGuest Pay v1.6 software for the hospitality industry is approved as a certified interface on Merchant Link’s network. Agilysis develops software for the hospitality industry. Payment gateway USAePay said the cash-discount program from Paradise POS, developer of iOS-based point-of-sale software, will be available …

Finastra, a London-based vendor of digital-banking software, announced Monday it has acquired Malauzai Software Inc., a 9-year-old company based in Austin, Texas. Terms were not announced. The deal brings to Finastra a company serving more than 350 community financial institutions with solutions for such digital services as mobile remote deposit …

Fuel-pump maker Gilbarco Veeder-Root launched an exclusive EMV dispenser program for Chevron and Texaco retailers as the petroleum industry prepares for the 2020 EMV liability shift. Petroleum Card Services said the Oklahoma Petroleum Marketers & Convenience-Store Association named it as a payment-processing referral partner for its members. Garmin International Inc. launched …

Now officially a year old, Zelle is steadily gaining momentum. San Francisco-based Bank of the West, the 29th largest bank in the country ranked by assets, announced Thursday it will join the bank-controlled person-to-person payment network, which already claims some of the biggest financial institutions in the country. Also this week, …

USAA, the big insurance company and bank serving current and former military members and their families, filed a federal lawsuit Thursday accusing Wells Fargo Bank of infringing on four of its mobile remote deposit capture patents. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Marshall, Texas, asks for unspecified damages. …

Processor Fiserv Inc. said VyStar Credit Union, which ranks 17th among U.S. credit unions by asset size, has become the company’s first client to adopt an enhanced mobile-banking platform that offers newly introduced card controls. The controls allow cardholders to set rules for when, where, and how their cards can be …

With demand for artificial-intelligence capability soaring across most industries, Mastercard Inc. on Monday announced it is making the technology available to client institutions through a program it calls AI Express. Also on Monday, Mastercard and ATM maker Diebold Nixdorf Inc. unveiled a pair of new cardless ATM features. The new …

Long outclassed by nimble tech players, financial institutions are finally scoring points in the P2P payments game with the rapidly growing Zelle network. But nobody’s conceding defeat in this much-coveted market. Keeping track of the players in peer-to-peer payments is like following an ensemble cast—a playbill is needed to identify …

Many years ago, in a press interview, I commented on the importance to banks and payment companies of understanding the then new phenomenon of Facebook. At the time, it looked as if social media might become a major platform for payments. It turns out that mobile media has taken that …