For the nation’s automated clearing house network, payments trends already under way before the coronavirus pandemic are still unfolding—only faster.  ACH payments initiated on the Web to pay bills and make other transfers totaled 2.1 billion in 2020’s fourth quarter, a 15.2% increase year-over-year, Nacha reported Thursday. Herndon, Va.-based Nacha …

Online account debiting has grown in usage and prominence as consumers and businesses turn to e-commerce in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. But now many businesses are reckoning with a rule that will take effect in March that requires sellers using the automated clearing house to perform more rigorous …

Visa Inc. has dropped its year-old, $5.3-billion bid for the data network Plaid Inc. in the wake of an antitrust lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice. The DoJ feared Visa could use Plaid’s links to financial institutions to stifle competition in the debit market, a contention Visa denied.The big drugstore chain Walgreen …

New national systems, the card networks, and blockchain operations are all piling into real-time payments. What’s going on, and why? If the travails of 2020 had any advantages, they lay in how the struggle with the pandemic offered opportunities to demonstrate the vital utility of technologies like contactless payments and …

Visa and Mastercard are the world’s premier networks for card transactions. Can they afford to rest content with that distinction? It’s safe to say that most readers of this story have spent most of their adult lives with plastic tokens branded by Visa or Mastercard in their wallet. The two …

Bitcoin, the world’s largest and most well-known digital currency, is ending the year above $28,000, a quadrupling of its value since the start of 2020. Its market capitalization as of Dec. 30 is $536 billion, up from $133 billion at Jan. 2.RevoluGroup Canada Inc. has launched the RevoluEX Cryptocurrency Exchange that …

Wells Fargo Co. said overall levels of optimism among small businesses remain at just more than half where they were late last year, even though its Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index rose 12 points for the second straight quarter in the latest period.As local governments imposed measures to control fresh outbreaks …

E-commerce has been setting records during the coronavirus pandemic, but processors should be thinking about ways to innovate. For example: how to make transactions simpler, faster, and more secure? Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, e-commerce was big business for merchants and processors. But since the pandemic struck in March, online …

Software-based options are proliferating for merchants who want to use their own mobile phones for payment card acceptance. Are we entering the era of Square II? Square Inc. made payments history a decade ago with its iconic dongle that enabled iPhones to accept payment cards (“How the Twitter Guy Changed …

Visa Inc. isn’t taking it lying down. The card network last month delivered a rebuke to the Department of Justice over the government’s antitrust lawsuit attempting to block Visa’s $5.3-billion acquisition of Plaid Inc., calling the lawsuit “legally flawed and contradicted by the facts.” The Department of Justice, which had …