Days after launching services that allow users to make international remittances and use a virtual prepaid card for payments, Samsung Electronics Co. launched Samsung POS, an app that it says will let merchants accept near-field communication payments on their mobile devices. Developed with payments-technology firm Mobeewave, Samsung POS is aimed at micro-merchants and other small …

Payments companies drove merger-and-acquisition activity in the financial-technology sector in 2019’s first nine months, according to a new analysis. Payments firms were involved in four of the top 10 deals tracked by New York City-based investment bank Berkery Noyes Securities LLC. The value of the payments mergers totaled $94.1 billion, …

Payments provider Fattmerchant launched an online-reviews integration feature, which provides merchants the ability to view and respond to reviews, such as those on Google, within the Fattmerchant platform.Aiming at hourly workers, a startup called Branch launched a free digital checking account and a debit card through Evolve Bank & Trust and Mastercard Inc.Cybersecurity firm GM …

The London-based financial-services technology provider Finastra said Wednesday that it has agreed to offer blockchain technology from Ripple Labs Inc. for cross-border payments processed by its client institutions. In related news, more than 1,500 firms have inquired with the Libra Association about joining the group, the association said, in the …

The Federal Bureau of Investigation recently notified cybersecurity companies about attacks that could defeat multifactor authentication systems protecting sensitive online personal and financial data, systems usually considered much stronger than two-factor authentication combinations such as user names and passwords. The FBI last month quietly sent a so-called private-industry notification (PIN)—a …

Friday’s news that PayPal Holdings Inc. is bailing out of Facebook Inc.’s Libra cryptocurrency project underscores the importance of an upcoming meeting of the project’s backers in Geneva, Switzerland, observers say. It has also heightened speculation about whether the project is likely to lose more of the remaining 26 companies …

In a bad week for cryptocurrency, a news report emerged late Thursday that PayPal Holdings Inc. skipped a key meeting of backers of Facebook Inc.’s Libra initiative. And, in the state of Ohio, officials on Wednesday suspended a pioneering site that accepted business taxes via Bitcoin. Twenty-seven of the 28 …

The Samsung Pay mobile wallet introduced a Mastercard-branded virtual prepaid card called Samsung Pay Cash, which is accepted at all locations that accept Mastercard and Samsung Pay transactions. The technology behind the card is provided by Netspend, a unit of Global Payments Inc. The move comes on the heels of Samsung …

Payments executives love to talk about the security of paying with a smart phone, but that message still hasn’t gotten through to consumers, according to new survey findings from The Pew Charitable Trusts. The good news for mobile-payments proponents is that Pew found more than half, 56%, of its respondents …

Investors in payment stocks experienced something in September they don’t have to suffer through very often—two straight months of negative returns. A basket of 27 transaction-processor stocks tracked by Chicago-based Barrington Research Associates Inc. posted a negative mean return of 3.89% in September, considerably worse than three major stock-market indexes. …