Consumer-payments services are starting to garner attention among businesses, with 76% of banks having corporate customers asking for automated business-to-consumer payment services. That’s the word from Bottomline Technologies Inc. in its 2019 B2B Payments and Working Capital Management Strategies Survey, released this week. The survey of more than 300 financial …

American Express Co. reported first-quarter U.S. card-billed business of $195.5 billion, up 7% year-over-year. International volume slipped 1% to $100.2 billion, bringing AmEx’s total billed business to $295.7 billion, a 4% increase from $283.8 billion a year earlier. Discount revenue rose 5% to $6.2 billion. AmEx said its average worldwide …

Spectrum Concessions has chosen a mobile-ordering app from Noble Inc. to allow customers at several Spectrum venues to order and pay for food and drinks with a smart phone. The venues include the Hippodrome Theatre in Baltimore, the Long Center in Austin, Texas, and the Hennepin Theatre Trust in Minneapolis. …

As money movement gets faster, consumer expectations are increasingly pushing payments providers to make funds available sooner. PayPal Holdings Inc. on Tuesday bowed to that reality with the latest in a series of faster-payment services. The new service, called Instant Transfer to bank, relies on connections to real-time payments pioneer …

The concept of push payments is finding favor among payments providers as two companies separately announce new disbursement services. Atlanta-based Repay said its Instant Funding service enables organizations to send funds directly to eligible Visa Inc. debit and prepaid cards via Visa Direct, the network’s real-time debit service. Repay’s lending clients, …

The Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with two defendants accused of laundering nearly $6 million in credit card charges through fraudulent merchant accounts. Lightspeed, developer of a cloud-based point-of-sale system, released Lightspeed Loyalty, a service that offers merchants a rewards program, automated marketing, customer data reporting, and, for restaurants, …

Three years ago, Mastercard shelled out big money for a U.K. technology firm. As faster payments take hold in the States, the rationale for that deal will soon be put to the test. Back in July 2017, the Federal Reserve issued a challenge to the U.S. payments industry: create a …

Addressing doubts among at least some sellers, eBay Inc. seller advocate Jim “Griff” Griffith said sellers “can put [their] consternation aside” regarding the marketplace giant’s new managed-payments program, which will not include traditional eBay payment method PayPal until next year. Online payments provider Stripe Inc. agreed to use Visa Inc.’s push-payment …

Across the world, governments are cracking down on immigration. Cross-border payments, however, continue to grow with the global economy. Will blockchain be next? President Donald Trump has made cracking down on both illegal and legal immigration to the United States a showpiece, though controversial, policy of his administration. European countries, …

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 …