• Payments provider TransFirst, a unit of Total System Services Inc. (TSYS), and Raintree Systems, which provides specialized practice-management software, formed a partnership that sees TransFirst as the integrated payments provider in Raintree’s software. • Following its decision earlier this week to halt production, sale, and exchange of its troubled …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Ripple effects from the Wendy’s Co. data breach continue to swirl around the Columbus, Ohio-based hamburger chain, some perhaps in unexpected ways. A Michigan credit union that last week began declining credit and debit card transactions by its members at all Wendy’s locations refuses to say …

• Payment gateway Shift4 Corp., which claims to have introduced in 2005 the first payment-data tokenization solution, announced it has surpassed the 7-billion mark in tokenized transactions. • The NFC Forum announced it has made available a newly adopted and four candidate technical specifications for near-field communication. The adopted specification …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Ever since the advent of mobile shopping, experts have cautioned that spending in the new channel would be hampered by small screens and clunky interfaces. Now, though, relatively new technology like natural-language interfaces and so-called bots may be coming to the rescue. A new study released …

• To Go Stores, a Puerto Rico-based convenience-store chain, will use P97 Networks’ PetroZone mobile commerce and digital marketing platform to enable mobile payments at the pump and for in-store transactions, P97 Networks announced. • Mattress retailer Casper Sleep Inc. said it is now accepting Apple Pay for online purchases. …

• Merchant processor Payroc LLC announced it has acquired payment gateway The iTransact Group. Terms were not disclosed. Besides the gateway, the deal brings 6,000 merchants with $1.3 billion in annual volume to Payroc, along with mobile point-of-sale technology and a payment-facilitator platform. • Payments provider Intrix Technology Inc. purchased the business …

• Office-supply giant Staples Inc. has begun accepting Apple Pay on its mobile Web site, m.staples.com. Staples early on began accepting Apple Inc.’s mobile wallet in its stores and on its app. Apple recently made the service available for browser-based payments using Safari. • More than half of consumers believe …

• The Independent Community Bankers of America trade group submitted a faster-payments proposal to the Federal Reserve’s Faster Payments Task Force; developed with North American Banking Co., the ICBA proposal includes a white-label mobile application and a payments directory to enable transaction settlements through the automated clearing house network’s new …

By Jim Daly@DTPayment News Nearly two years and thousands of comments after issuing its draft regulation, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued its long-awaited final prepaid card rule Wednesday. The 1,689-page document, almost double the size of the draft rule the CFPB issued in November 2014, largely follows what the …

• A federal judge in California has allowed an antitrust case to move forward against American Express Co., Discover Financial Services, MasterCard Inc., and Visa Inc. The case was filed in March by Florida merchants as a class-action suit alleging the networks had conspired to shift chargeback liability from banks …