Shopify Inc. said it is expanding a service that will let Instagram users buy products from select merchants without leaving the Instagram app. The service, which Shopify has been testing since early this year, lets merchants tag their posts to connect users to their catalogs. The photo-sharing service Instagram, owned by …

Shares of payments companies outperformed the general stock-market indexes in September, and beat most of them in the third quarter and the year so far, investment firm Barrington Research reported Monday. A group of 29 payments stocks posted a mean return of 2.74% in September, its ninth straight month of …

The segment could play a key role in expanding electronic payments as fewer consumers carry cash. Factors ranging from payments to technology companies to changing consumer behavior are heightening attention to unattended payments. While electronic payment acceptance in this space, which includes vending machines, parking garages, and car washes, has …

There are plenty of opportunities for payments providers—if they play the game right, say Rick Oglesby and Brad Margol. Major retailers fear business disruption from Apple Inc., Facebook Inc., and Google/Alphabet, but they are already locked in head-to-head competition with Amazon.com Inc., and Amazon is clearly winning. It has climbed …

The Federal Reserve’s call for a faster-payments system to be in place in the United States by 2020 has been termed everything from a vision to a goal, a soft goal, or a deadline. One thing it isn’t is a mandate. So can faster payments arrive in less than two …

Grocer Whole Foods Market, now a unit of Amazon.com Inc., said it is investigating a breach of the point-of-sale software used in its taprooms and full-service restaurants in some of its stores. Whole Foods did not say how many locations or how many cards are affected. It said the payment system for the …

Canadian pension-fund manager Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec and private-equity firm Novacap said they would invest in Quebec-based Pivotal Payments, valuing the merchant processor at about C$525 million ($424 million), Pivotal Payments announced. Processor First Data Corp. introduced its “Disburse-to-Debit” service that pushes funds across debit networks so that businesses can …

There are still many unknowns, but siding and the roof are on order for the frame of the Federal Reserve’s faster-payments project. That’s the message conveyed Tuesday by Fed officials and payments-industry executives who participated in a years-long effort to speed up U.S. electronic payments as well as make them …

Consumer-goods manufacturer Shinola has signed up to use the point-of-sale financing service from Affirm Inc. The ATM Industry Association released an Operation Choke Point resource kit for ATM operators. The association said ATM operators continue to receive account-closure notices despite the Department of Justice’s public statement to end the enforcement program. Merchant services provider SignaPay Ltd. released the PayLo …

First Tech Federal Credit Union has activated the Zelle person-to-person payment service in its mobile-banking app, which has 110,000 users. Puerto Rico-based payment processor Evertec Inc. said it will donate $1 million for relief efforts and that it continues to process ATM and point-of-sale transactions on the island, which was devastated by Hurricane Maria. …