When it comes to faster payments, merchants don’t want to be left out, and that’s creating a big opportunity for payments processors and other merchant acquirers.  Indeed, as the payments industry shifts toward real-time and near-real-time money movement, processors can cash in on the value of getting good funds into …

Payment processor ACI Worldwide Inc. reported Thursday that Toronto-based BMO Financial Group, the parent company of Bank of Montreal and Chicago’s Harris Bank, has rolled out ACI’s payments hub, which can connect banks to real-time payment services. The rollout took nine months, which BMO and Naples, Fla.-based ACI characterized as …

After years of planning and deliberation, the payments industry is starting to announce services based on real-time processing. One of the first is Mastercard Inc., which on Wednesday unveiled a system that will allow consumers to view bills and then transfer funds to the billers within seconds. Experts see an …

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday unveiled a proposal to facilitate real-time settlement of faster payments. The Fed said it is not committed to any specific action on its plan, but banks and private-sector payment processors are watching for any infringement on their turf. “Over the past year, we have undertaken …

Payment-industry incumbents, particularly the global credit card networks and their allied banks and processors, can’t rest on their laurels lest fast-growing mobile and non-card payment systems in much of the world leave them in the dust. That was the conclusion of payments researchers Friday who spoke at the Mobile Payments …

Despite its detractors, the so-called gig economy that relies on freelance workers looks like it’s here to stay. And Lyft Inc., a leading ride-share provider that’s a major player in the gig economy, would like to see the payments industry evolve to meet the gig economy’s needs. Ashwin Raj, the …

Distributed-ledger payments provider Ripple Labs on Thursday announced three cryptocurrency exchanges that will work with its xRapid cross-border payments product. XRapid uses Ripple’s XRP digital currency and depends on exchanges to translate transactions into local fiat currencies. San Francisco-based Ripple said it is partnering with Bittrex for exchanges to U.S. …

Don’t look for many optimists in the payments industry when it comes to a future with less fraud. Fully 84% of those surveyed by TD Bank say payments fraud will become a bigger threat over the next one to two years. Released Tuesday, the survey, conducted this spring at the …

Dutch payments processor Adyen N.V. is in the limelight just as the payments business has gotten hot. Ant Financial just raised the biggest private funding round ever—$14 billion at a $150 billion valuation, in part on the back of its Alipay unit. These are new and nontraditional entrants. The old …

First it was retailers, which tried but failed. Now an airline trade group wants to develop a payment system that would bypass the credit card networks, theoretically saving carriers billions in interchange. The proposal comes from the International Air Transport Association, which says it has 280 members representing 83% of …