• Avidia Bank announced it is offering same-day ACH payments using technology supplied by linked2pay, a payments-technology company. • Fuel-pump manufacturer and convenience-store technology provider Gilbarco Veeder-Root said Colbea Inc., which does business as Seasons Corner Market, is installing Gilbarco’s Passport Point of Sale system to handle EMV chip card payments …

• U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch is expected to announce a crackdown on a global mail-fraud scheme that allegedly stole millions of dollars from elderly victims, CNNMoney reported. At the center of the investigation is an Canadian processor named PacNet Services Ltd. that reportedly deposited many of the victims’ checks. …

• The total value of contactless transactions worldwide will reach nearly $500 billion next year, up fully 56% from an estimated $321 billion in 2016, according to Juniper Research. • Samsung Electronics America Inc. said more than 500,000 replacement Galaxy Note7 phablets have arrived in the U.S. and will be available …

• The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC selected IBM Corp.’s Power8 system for its real-time payments service, expected to go live next year. The IBM system will run software from VocaLink Holdings Ltd., which TCH selected last year as a vendor for its project. VocaLink is being acquired by MasterCard …

• Processor Fiserv Inc. said a new scoring model for its Payment Fraud Manager service designed specifically for automated clearing house transactions detected more than 90% of fraud while reviewing only 2% of the transactions in model validation tests. • Payment gateway Network Merchants LLC announced its SwIPe EMV chip …

• Ripple, a provider of distributed-ledger technology for financial transactions, has completed a $55 million Series B funding round. • In related news, Tipalti, which provides a platform to automate supplier payments, announced a $14 million funding round. • Time Inc. said it has integrated Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay to allow mobile …

• USA Technologies Inc., a provider of wireless payment services for vending machines and other unattended merchant locations, reported $169 million in purchase volume on its 429,000-location network in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2016 ended June 30, up 50% from a year earlier. Transaction volume hit 89 million, up …

• MasterCard Inc. issued its latest U.S. EMV progress report; the network says it has 2 million chip-active merchant locations and that 88% of MasterCard consumer credit cards now have chips. • Processor Elavon announced it is launching a tablet-based point-of-sale product in Canada in conjunction with talech, a POS …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews The payments industry may be undergoing an unprecedented attack by fraudsters, but funding of cybersecurity startups by top investors will drop somewhat this year compared to 2015, according to the latest data from CBInsights, a New York City-based firm that tracks venture-capital investment. Total cybersecurity funding …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews For years, payments providers have struggled to make money on person-to-person payments, and now Square Inc. is taking a swing at the problem. Starting now, Square is offering to make instant transfers of Square Cash funds into users’ bank accounts if they pony up a 1% …