The pending acquisitions of two leading merchant processors by two leading core financial-institution processors are a “good thing,” Visa Inc. chief executive Alfred F. Kelly Jr. said Wednesday.  “We’ve got very good relationships and a lot of history with all four of these players,” according to Kelly. His comments came …

In advance of a key European regulation taking effect late this summer, San Francisco-based payments provider Stripe Inc. has acquired Touchtech Payments, a developer of authentication software. Terms of the deal, announced Wednesday, were not disclosed. Founded in 2014, Dublin-based Touchtech specializes in code that establishes customer identities for financial …

Few foresaw this combination, but the deal is far from baffling once you understand Fiserv’s history and long-term strategy. Every so often, a deal comes along that makes the market take notice. One such moment was the announcement in January of the Fiserv Inc.-First Data Corp. multibillion-dollar acquisition/merger. Essentially, the …

This one wasn’t hard to predict. Observers said Fiserv Inc.’s $22 billion bid for mega-processor First Data Corp. in January would trigger a wave of mergers in the payments industry—and sure enough, along came Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) on March 18 with a $43-billion cash-and-stock deal to acquire …

The other shoe has dropped. Fidelity National Information Services Inc.’s $43-billion cash-and-stock deal to acquire Worldpay Inc., announced early Monday, will create a processing behemoth that will compete globally across a sweeping range of payments businesses, including merchant acquiring, e-commerce, faster payments, and core processing. And though the bosses of …

Close observers of the payment-processing industry predicted Fiserv Inc. would start a merger wave when it announced its $22 billion deal to acquire First Data Corp. in January. That prophecy seems to have come true with the even bigger $43 billion FIS-Worldpay merger announced Monday, and the consolidation wave probably hasn’t …

Merchant acquirer EVO Payments Inc. plans to reinvigorate its lagging U.S. e-commerce business while still pursuing expansion opportunities abroad, its chief executive said Wednesday. Atlanta-based EVO is one of the smaller publicly traded payment processors, and it has a unique business model. Its roots are in the U.S., but today …

With its pending $750 million acquisition of The Western Union Co.’s bill-pay subsidiary Speedpay Inc., payment-software and processing provider ACI Worldwide Inc. will gain control of a profitable operation that made a name for itself in expedited payments. “Speedpay invented the expedited-payments market,” says Richard K. Crone, chief executive of …

Staying on top in payments requires close attention to a few ironclad rules, say Saurabh Wahi and Davis Ward. In the fourth annual Prophet Brand Relevance Index (BRI), PayPal Holdings Inc. was once again, and by far, the best-performing financial-services brand. It’s not just that it continues to outperform such …

PayPal’s octopus-like strategy covers everything from P2P payments, bill pay, and the point of sale to parting ways with eBay. Can Schulman and Co. keep all the balls in the air? PayPal Holdings Inc. president and chief executive Dan Schulman can’t be accused of making small plans. “We aspire to …