• The number of merchants accepting chip cards increased to 1.4 million as of April 30, according to new data from MasterCard Inc. That’s a 17% increase from 1.2 million MasterCard reported in March. MasterCard also says 68% of all U.S.-issued MasterCard-branded consumer credit cards have an EMV chip. The …

• The Texas Attorney General’s office and PayPal Holdings Inc. last week settled the office’s allegations that PayPal’s Venmo person-to-person payments service compromised customers’ privacy and security; PayPal agreed to improve disclosures, ensure that Venmo users know who can see their transaction information, and pay the state $175,000. “We are …

JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Chase Pay mobile-payment service, announced in October, is on track for tests this summer with greater availability in the fourth quarter, according to Kim Fitzsimmons, head of global e-commerce and large omnichannel solutions at Chase Commerce Solutions. Fitzsimmons, who spoke Monday during a panel discussion at …

• Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) said it is integrating a machine-learning engine from Featurespace that will allow the processor to generate real-time decisions on individual consumers. TSYS says the speedier fraud-control processing will help prepare its clients for the arrival of real-time payments. • Plastc Inc., which markets a …

Members of Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime membership service are enthusiastic users of the e-retail giant’s payments service, which it makes available to other merchants. In fact, some 50% of Amazon Pay’s users belong to Prime, according to Amazon Pay vice president Patrick Gauthier, who spoke with Digital Transactions News Tuesday at …

• Fitness-band vendor Fitbit Inc. has acquired the wearable-payments assets of Coin in a deal that closed May 12 and includes relevant personnel and intellectual property. Terms were not disclosed. Coin, which was part of a wearable-payments initiative announced earlier this year by MasterCard Inc., is best-known for a device that …

After eight months of experimentation in Columbus, Ohio, Merchant Customer Exchange LLC on Monday issued a statement from chief executive Brian Mooney announcing it is putting off a national rollout of its CurrentC mobile-payments service to an unspecified date. Mooney added that the Boston-based company, formed in 2012 by many …

U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., made his name in the payments business with an amendment to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act that put a cap on the debit card interchange big banks can earn. Now, he’s investigating the nation’s rocky EMV rollout with separate inquiries concerning snarled certification queues and the …

Payments startup Payzing Inc. is banking that a digital-currency integration with Uphold, a virtual funds and commodity platform, will lead to e-commerce success. San Francisco-based Payzing uses Uphold’s blockchain technology to offer online merchants an alternate payment method to traditional credit and debit cards. Consumers use their Uphold accounts to …

The Wendy’s Co. admitted publicly Wednesday that a point-of-sale system at “fewer than 300” of its franchised restaurants in North America had been affected by malware, starting last fall. In a quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Dublin, Ohio-based hamburger chain also said it has worked with …