Just over a year after transaction volume in many merchant segments flatlined due to the economic turmoil caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, activity is showing a steadily strengthening pulse, according to data released Thursday by Shift4 Payments Inc. In March, Shift4’s end-to-end transaction volume totaled $3.3 billion, up 40% from …

Forter Ltd., a specialist in online-fraud prevention, says merchants using the Magento e-commerce platform now have access to its services. Meanwhile, Mastercard Inc. says total U.S. retail sales increased 26.3% in March from March 2020. Online retailers using Adobe Inc.’s Magento platform can use a Magento plugin to ease the …

The Brink’s Co. announced it has acquired ATM owner and services provider PAI Inc. for $213 million. PAI’s network links 100,000 machines.Banking-technology provider Jack Henry & Associates Inc. announced more than 115 financial institutions are now live on its real-time payments hub, JHA PayCenter. The hub connects to The Clearing House Payments Co.’s Real Time …

As part of its strategy to enable faster electronic payments, Dwolla Inc. on Tuesday released an application programming interface to enable real-time payments through The Clearing House Payments Co.’s RTP network. Fort Lee, New Jersey-based Cross River Bank Inc. will provide the processing link to the RTP network. Development of …

With its acquisition of Axia Technologies Inc., also known as AxiaMed, Bank of America Corp. took a big step toward rebuilding its merchant-acquiring business. AxiaMed provides financial services and payments technology to health-care providers. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition, announced Friday, gives Bank of America a …

OLB Group is the latest processor to support Quick Response codes as merchants look for ways to adopt contactless-payment options in the wake of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. OLB will support dynamic QR codes, which are generated in real time for each transaction, on its cloud-based OmniSoft business-management platform and …

Despite scattered successes, too many pitfalls dot the road to widespread merchant acceptance. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies captured the public imagination over the past year, as Bitcoin shattered record after record, PayPal and Square Cash announced they would allow customers to buy cryptocurrency, and major financial institutions such as Bank …

The drive to build merchant acceptance of cryptocurrency continues to gain momentum with RocketFuel Blockchain Inc.’s announcement on Wednesday that it is rolling out a one-click, blockchain-based payments solution for e-commerce transactions. RocketFuel’s service supports payments or direct bank transfers in 43 cryptocurrencies. The first two merchants to adopt the …

Card-based biometric authentication took a step forward with an announcement early Wednesday that a technology from Fingerprint Cards AB has complied with reference specifications set by Mastercard Inc. The compliance is a first for fingerprint authentication on a card, according to Sweden-based Fingerprints and Fime, an organization that consults on …

As payments providers ramp up fast-payment capabilities that don’t depend on existing card-payment rails, pressure has mounted on the dominant U.S. card networks to enable quick transfers from senders to accounts held by receivers worldwide. Visa Inc. on Tuesday, for example, announced Visa Direct Payouts, which allows users to send …