JPMorgan Chase & Co. said it will buy InstaMed, a specialist in health-care payments. Terms were not disclosed. In April, InstaMed released an app with a blockchain prototype that it said will demonstrate how the technology can support adjudication and payment for insurance claims, patient billing, and patient payment. NLS …

Conventional wisdom in the payments business has been that the advent and spread of contactless cards would pave the way for wider use of mobile payments. But research released this week indicates that may not be the case. Indeed, far from serving as the training wheels for mobile payments, new …

Boomtown Inc., which provides merchant-support services, raised $12 million in funding led by Telstra Ventures with others participating. The Series B funding will go toward building its Relay Software-as-a-Service platform and additional growth. Boomtown also announced that Robert H.B. Baldwin Jr., a member of the Global Payments Inc. board of …

Automatic Labs Inc., a unit of SiriusXM, announced its Connected Car Assistant is available at major retailers nationwide for $99.99. The product, which consists of an app and an adapter, allows drivers to pay road tolls, among other connected-car functions. Revel Systems Inc. completed the installation of its cloud-based iPad …

Parking is usually a sedate activity, unless you’re competing with another driver for a rare open spot on a busy downtown street or that space closest to the grocery store’s entryway. But parking as a new market for electronic payments is a different story, with intense activity by everyone from …

POSaBIT, a point-of-sale services provider for cannabis retailers, said an analysis of “hundreds of thousands” of transactions at more than 120 California, Washington, and Colorado stores found that consumers belonging to a cannabis retailer’s loyalty rewards program had a 28% higher average ticket value and visited the store more frequently …

SurchX, a surcharging specialist, launched SurchX for e-commerce platform Magento. SurchX automatically calculates surcharges and fee structures based on card type and jurisdiction. The fee can be passed on for the consumer to pay. Payments provider ACI Worldwide said its real-time payments technology is supporting BMO Financial Group’s efforts to …

Cardlytics Inc., a company that uses purchase data to help financial institutions manage their rewards programs with retail partners, reported its count of monthly active users reached 108.5 million in the first quarter, up 85% over the first quarter of 2018, as users from new clients JPMorgan Chase & Co. …

Bank of America Corp. is considering not renewing its merchant-acquiring joint venture with First Data Corp., known as Bank of America Merchant Services, when the contract ends in June 2020, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed sources. BAMS is the nation’s third-largest acquirer, having processed $840 billion in payment …

An automated clearing house network rule tightening security around Internet purchases, one of the ACH’s fastest-growing transaction categories, is set to take effect Jan. 1. The rule change, technically an amendment, affects so-called WEB debits, which cover a wide variety of ACH-funded Internet payments. It will require merchants as ACH …