Backers of the so-called SegWit2x proposal to double block size for Bitcoin suspended the effort on Wednesday, citing a lack of “consensus for a clean blocksize upgrade.” The move, which would have occurred around Nov. 16, was an effort to increase transaction capacity for Bitcoin and relieve upward pressure on …

Global Payments Inc. was one of the first merchant acquirers to identify the payments opportunities in pairing up with independent software vendors and related firms that serve businesses with all manner of applications, and now those channels are bringing in 40% of revenues, chief executive Jeff Sloan said Wednesday. That …

NCR Corp. launched the NCR Silver Quantum point-of-sale system that features an integrated payment device with mobile wallet acceptance, a customer loyalty program, and a scanner that are loaded onto a Samsung Galaxy Tab A tablet. NCR Silver Quantum, in addition to the NCR Silver POS software, is the first …

USA Technologies Inc., which provides payment technology for unattended merchant locations, announced it has an $85 million cash and stock deal to acquire Cantaloupe Systems, a San Francisco-based software provider serving the vending-machine industry. Cantaloupe operates in the U.S., Canada, and several international markets, and its Seed Cloud applications include …

Interac, Canada’s debit network, has made it easier to digitally send money direct to another bank account through its e-Transfer service by eliminating the need for recipients to answer a security question each time a transfer is made. Answering a security question validates the recipient to whom the money is …

The U.S. payments community woke up Thursday morning to find Bitcoin setting yet another record, this time breaching the $7,000 level less than two weeks after soaring past $6,000. By mid-morning Central Time, the price stood at $7,132, according to Coindesk. The cryptocurrency is testing new highs in the wake …

Encryption specialist Bluefin Payment Systems said it will provide encryption services to clients of payments provider Accepta LLC. A report from processor Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) found 25 real-time payments systems in operation globally, up from 19 last year and more than twice the number in 2013. Another …

Mobile point-of-sale provider CardFlight said payment processor Beyond will offer CardFlight’s SwipeSimple device to merchants. The technology enables EMV chip card transactions from a mobile device. CME Group, a major derivatives marketplace, announced plans to launch a futures market for Bitcoin before the end of the year, pending regulatory review. On …

Whether the legacy payments players like it or not, the case is strong for much greater intervention by the Fed in improving payments. With July’s release of Part Two of the Faster Payments Task Force Final Report, which speculated that near real-time payments could/should be on the payments scene by …

Our daunting set of sticky wickets this time ranges from data breaches that just don’t stop to debit card pitfalls to travails for P2P and Bitcoin. This is Digital Transactions magazine’s 11th annual ranking of payments woes, and one lesson we’ve learned in all that time is that they don’t …