The merchant-acquiring business continued its consolidation trend on Wednesday with the news that Priority Payment Systems LLC has merged with Cynergy Data LLC. The deal, terms of which were not disclosed, has created an independent sales organization processing some $20 billion annually for 125,000 merchant clients. Comvest Partners, a West Palm …

By Jim Daly In what’s shaping up to be a very busy year in the vibrant world of electronic bill payments, financial-management software provider Intuit Inc. on Tuesday announced plans to buy online and mobile bill-pay services provider Check Inc. for $360 million. Rumored for about a month, the deal …

Bitcoin may remain volatile and controversial, but the digital currency holds enough potential that it is starting to attract seasoned payments professionals, particularly in the business of merchant acceptance. Witness Bitnet, founded in January by a pair of former executives with payments processor CyberSource Corp. to make it easier for …

The mobile-payments variant known as host card emulation captured its biggest financial-institution backer yet with a deal between Russia’s Sberbank and Sequent Software Inc. Sberbank will launch a commercial service “later this year” using HCE software from Mountain View, Calif.-based Sequent, an official with the bank tells Digital Transactions News. …

Kevin Woodward Online gambling, now legal in only three states, could produce a big payoff for payments companies. Payment companies hoping to hit the jackpot by providing services for online gambling in the United States will want some patience, education, and a bit of luck. Just three states—Delaware, New Jersey, …

Our Guide spotlights how mobile payments and digital currency drive payments innovation. by John Stewart, Jim Daly, and Kevin Woodward Alternative payment schemes are becoming almost too numerous to count. A few months back, one payments-industry veteran listed all the mobile wallets he knew of and came up with about …

To bring cart abandonment back down to earth, e-marketers need to fix their mobile payments and promotions systems—and they don’t have much time, says Ralph Dangelmaier. For mobile conversion rates to meet or surpass non-mobile benchmarks, the mobile checkout and payment process needs to be frictionless, intuitive, marketing-savvy, and global-aware. …

In a further escalation of its war on costly bill-payment exceptions, automated clearing house governing body NACHA on Monday announced a new program that will convert erroneous electronic bill payments that otherwise would go through as paper checks into ACH transactions with a new field where the biller can enter …

Merchants that think payment services should leverage software, be simple to integrate, carry low or no fees, and include digital-currency choices have a champion in PayStand, a startup that emerged Tuesday from private beta with $1 million in funding and a promise of no transaction fees for online sellers. The …

Two banks that sued Target Corp. and data-security services provider Trustwave Holdings Inc. in the wake of Target’s massive data breach have withdrawn their federal lawsuit after filing it only a week ago, leaving payments-industry observers wondering why they brought the action in the first place. In separate motions filed …