In a surprise development that has the potential to scuttle a merger agreement between payments-software firms S1 Corp. and Fundtech Ltd., ACI Worldwide Inc. on Tuesday announced a cash-and-stock bid valued at $540 million to acquire its Atlanta-based rival S1. If the deal is consummated, it will combine two …

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  Faster clearing and settlement of automated clearing house transactions, hampered by a host of issues and limitations, could be picking up some momentum, albeit slowly. Software is emerging to allow both large and small financial institutions to take advantage of a nearly 1-year-old Federal Reserve service that clears transactions …

  Keeping a Wary Eye on the Networks   Forget about Google and PayPal. Merchant acquirers are more worried about competitive threats from their long-time spouses by forced marriage, the payment card networks.   That intelligence comes from an Aite Group LLC survey of 20 industry executives, including 17 chief …

  Gideon Samid / Gideon@AGSgo.com   What is a strategic security analysis (SSA) when it comes to payments and banking? It is essentially a matrix where each row identifies a credible attack scenario and each column lists a counter-action available to us. At the intersection of each column with each …

  Karen Epper Hoffman   The recession and the shaky recovery have taken their toll on acquiring, though the business has fared better than most other industries. Now, the business could be set to soar—if factors like Durbin don’t choke off growth.   In an economy where even the strongest …

  Peter Lucas   Keeping up with change in electronic payments is hard, but essential, work for community banks. Here’s how they’re doing it.   Every time a huge bank—Bank of America Corp., JP Morgan Chase & Co., and Wells Fargo & Co., for example—makes a splash in payments, as …

n by Steve Mott   While most observers have viewed Visa’s recent string of acquisitions as a mere broadening of its conventional card franchise, a long-time analyst of the payments business sees a clever play for dominance of the digital future.   Just when the U.S. payments industry appears poised …

  Altering consumer behavior for a complete move away from the payment card is realistically years and years in the future.   Far from getting in the way of chip-and-PIN card adoption in the U.S. market, mobile payments at the point of sale will actually help pave the way for …

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