Visa Inc. on Thursday delivered a rebuke to the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit attempting to block its $5.3 billion acquisition of Plaid Inc., calling the lawsuit “legally flawed and contradicted by the facts.”  The Department of Justice, which had filed the suit hours earlier, charges that Visa’s deal for …

Each year, Digital Transactions uses this space to lay out the problems impacting the payments industry. This time, the Covid-19 pandemic has inflected our coverage across a wide range of issues. The solutions will have to be far from business as usual. 2020 has been one of those years you …

Covid-19 has been highly disruptive to the U.S. retail sector, with research estimating sales will fall by 10.5% this year. The same forecast suggests small, mainly brick-and-mortar retailers will see a 14% drop in sales. Even now, months after the pandemic’s first appearance in the U.S market, forty-five percent of …

Billtrust, a provider of accounts-receivable software for businesses, said it will go public at a valuation of $1.3 billion through a merger with South Mountain Merger Corp., a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. Going public via a SPAC has become an increasingly popular option in recent months.In …

Fintech startup Save has reached an agreement to use Galileo Financial Technologies Inc.’s API-driven payments-processing platform for its Debit Invest debit cards and Save Market Savings accounts.  Galileo’s platform is expected to make it easier for Save customers to open and fund their accounts and integrate them with Save’s bank …

PCI Pal, whose services enable businesses to collect payments in accordance with the PCI Security Standards Council data-security rules, announced a link-up with payments provider Stripe Inc. to allow Stripe clients to more quickly deploy PCI Pal’s technology.Paya Inc. said UtilityBilling.com, a subscription billing and payment platform, integrated Paya’s processing service.PlusPass, …

Consumers are significantly increasing their use of digital channels when engaging with lenders, says research from TransUnion LLC released Thursday. That trend includes point-of-sale lending, which is rising fast during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the study. Since the pandemic hit the United States in March, 40% of consumers have …

For the week ending Sept. 27, debit card use was up 4.2% at restaurants, not including fast food, and credit card use was down 16.9% compared to the week ending Sept. 29, 2019, according to the Tracking Transaction Trends report from PSCU, a credit union service organization. Debit card use was …

The data networks that connect payments and other financial apps to users’ bank accounts are scrambling to standardize data access by moving to application programming interfaces and away from an older, cruder form of access known in the business as “screen scraping.” The effort comes as financial apps gain popularity …

Mastercard Inc. announced Wednesday plans to expand its Digital First card program in North America by partnering with payment processors to provide guidelines for consumer experience with digital payment cards.  Processors Mastercard is partnering with include CoreCard Software Inc., FIS Inc., Fiserv Inc., Galileo Processing Inc., i2c Inc., Marqeta Inc., …