• Financial-institution processor Fiserv Inc. said its payments segment posted adjusted revenues of $701 million in the third quarter, up 9% from $643 million a year earlier. Operating income rose 11.5% to $242 million. • Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced service changes in the U.S. and Mexico, and lower prices, involving …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews As payments firms seek to commercialize emerging online marketplaces, they’re starting to leverage automated routines that promise to overturn traditional transaction methods and, just possibly, deliver on the long-sought goal of so-called frictionless payments. This week, both MasterCard Inc. and PayPal Holdings Inc. announced new initiatives …

• Chip card standards body EMVCo issued 3-D Secure 2.0, its update of the 3-D Secure technology for protecting e-commerce transactions. The new specification supports app-based purchases on mobile and other devices and will streamline the checkout process in order reduce transaction abandonment, EMVCo says. • MasterCard Inc. announced plans to …

• Visa Inc. and chip maker and software provider Intel Corp. announced a two-pronged security initiative, one of which aims to protect the growing Zelle person-to-person payments network, to which Fiserv is providing a link. Zelle is expected to launch early next year. • In related news, Fifth Third Bank …

• Visa Inc. announced five key person-to-person payment integrations for its Visa Direct faster-payments system, which requires Visa issuers to make funds available to cardholders within 30 minutes. These include: Jack Henry & Associates for JHA Payment Solutions, Fidelity National Information Services for its People Pay service, Stripe Inc. for …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews It’s in its infancy, but the Internet of Things, or IoT, will represent a $14 billion revenue opportunity globally by 2020 for payments firms smart enough to capitalize on it, according to research firm IDC Financial Insights. “That is a very conservative estimate,” James Wester, research director …

• Merchant acquirer Worldpay brought its Worldpay Total integrated payments platform to the U.S.; Worldpay introduced the platform in the United Kingdom in November 2014 and extended it to European e-commerce merchants earlier this year. • U.S. Bancorp, owner of merchant acquirer Elavon, posted $412 million in merchant-processing revenues in …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews U.S. consumers are becoming more aware of mobile payments, which could potentially increase use of the burgeoning digital-payment method. Indeed 56% of them are “extremely aware” of the technology, finds the 2016 North America Consumer Digital Payments Survey from Accenture. In 2015, the figure was 52%. Only …

• Bank of America Corp. said its debit card purchase volumes totaled $71 billion in the third quarter, up 2.5% from $69.3 billion a year earlier. U.S. credit card purchase volume increased 2% to $57.6 billion. BofA said it now has 21.3 million mobile-banking users, a 15.8% increase from 18.4 …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews While the payments business is caught up these days in working out strategies for mobile apps and social media, it turns out these aren’t the cutting-edge technologies they once were. Instead, fields like virtual reality, machine learning, and natural language are winning the spotlight. That’s according …