• Financial-institution processor Fiserv Inc. said its payments segment posted adjusted revenues of $701 million in the third quarter, up 9% from $643 million a year earlier. Operating income rose 11.5% to $242 million. • Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced service changes in the U.S. and Mexico, and lower prices, involving …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews As payments firms seek to commercialize emerging online marketplaces, they’re starting to leverage automated routines that promise to overturn traditional transaction methods and, just possibly, deliver on the long-sought goal of so-called frictionless payments. This week, both MasterCard Inc. and PayPal Holdings Inc. announced new initiatives …

• Visa Inc. announced five key person-to-person payment integrations for its Visa Direct faster-payments system, which requires Visa issuers to make funds available to cardholders within 30 minutes. These include: Jack Henry & Associates for JHA Payment Solutions, Fidelity National Information Services for its People Pay service, Stripe Inc. for …

• Merchant acquirer Worldpay brought its Worldpay Total integrated payments platform to the U.S.; Worldpay introduced the platform in the United Kingdom in November 2014 and extended it to European e-commerce merchants earlier this year. • U.S. Bancorp, owner of merchant acquirer Elavon, posted $412 million in merchant-processing revenues in …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews While many observers have lamented the apparently slow growth in consumers’ adoption of mobile payments, that doesn’t mean more consumers aren’t using mobile devices each year to buy things. It also doesn’t mean users aren’t getting more comfortable buying bigger-ticket items via mobile channels. Surveys by …

• Mobile e-commerce grew 60% last year to reach $120 billion, with 70% of that total coming through browsers (50%) and apps (20%) accessed via smart phones, according to a new report from Javelin Strategy & Research. • Routine usage of mobile devices to make payments remains flat with last …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews While many experts have cited anecdotal evidence that more consumers would adopt and use mobile wallets if they could earn, manage, and redeem

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews With American Express Co. set to report its third-quarter financials Wednesday, the payments industry and Wall Street will be watching for signs from the beleaguered travel-and-entertainment giant about how it will recover from the loss of its cobranded card and acceptance relationship with Costco Wholesale Corp. AmEx …

• Bank of America Corp. said its debit card purchase volumes totaled $71 billion in the third quarter, up 2.5% from $69.3 billion a year earlier. U.S. credit card purchase volume increased 2% to $57.6 billion. BofA said it now has 21.3 million mobile-banking users, a 15.8% increase from 18.4 …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews While the payments business is caught up these days in working out strategies for mobile apps and social media, it turns out these aren’t the cutting-edge technologies they once were. Instead, fields like virtual reality, machine learning, and natural language are winning the spotlight. That’s according …