PayPal Holdings Inc. says it has lent $50 billion to American consumers since it bought the BillMeLater lending service 11 years ago. The company also advanced its efforts to generate revenues from its Venmo peer-to-peer payment service by making subscription payments to the Tidal music-streaming service available through Venmo. Now …

Point-of-sale technology provider Revel Systems released two new product lines, Revel Enterprise, for multilocation businesses, and Revel Essentials, aimed at restaurants and businesses with 20 or fewer locations. Shift4 Payments renamed its payment-management platform Lighthouse Transaction Manager. Formerly Dollars on the Net, the service enables merchants to access transaction reporting, …

Fiserv Inc. and First Data Corp. argue their proposed $22 billion combination will usher in a processing behemoth that should create substantial operating efficiencies and economies of scale. And so far, investors are buying that story. Shares of both companies are up by double-digit percentages since the Jan. 16 announcement …

Elavon, the Atlanta-based merchant-acquiring subsidiary of U.S. Bancorp, says it plans to hire approximately 500 employees globally over the next three years. Elavon currently employs more than 730 people in Atlanta and more than 4,500 worldwide. BlockChyp Inc., a payment software and gateway provider, said it completed Level 3 certification …

Want to start—or bet on—the next big thing in payments? Forget glitz and glamor and focus on startups that address pressing problems with substantial and realistic solutions, argues Eric Grover. Successful payments fintechs such as Adyen, Ant Financial, Klarna, Stripe, and Square have generated enormous excitement. With the arguable exception …

Benefitting from a built-in customer connection, retailer wallets adroitly tap into shoppers’ purchasing habits in ways unavailable to the big tech wallets. Retailer mobile wallets are proliferating in part because the consumer can get something that she can’t with any of the tech-based apps. That is a high degree of …

Unbridled enthusiasm for distributed ledgers has given way to a more sober assessment of the technology’s probable role in payments. A few years ago, evangelists for blockchain confidently predicted its widespread adoption to facilitate faster, more secure, and economical payment transactions.  The type of transaction didn’t matter. Whether it was …

So-called smart devices are invading the point of sale at an increasing pace. They bring undoubted advantages, but also a few complications. Judging by the number of times Fiserv Inc. chief executive Jeffery Yabuki and First Data Corp. CEO Frank Bisignano mentioned Clover last month during their joint announcement of …

Payment processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) last month unveiled a line of point-of-sale terminals and services for small and mid-size businesses, and took its Vital brand out of a 13-year retirement as the name for the new product suite. The cloud-based Vital POS has three major components: Vital Mobile, …

In a stunning announcement that surprised many observers last month, Fiserv Inc. struck a deal to acquire First Data Corp. with what the parties say will be the biggest ever such transaction in the payments and financial-technology businesses. The all-stock deal, expected to close in the third quarter, values First …