It’s been a busy year on the M&A front for merchant acquirers. What’s driving the deals, and what’s ahead in 2018? The year is coming to a close with nearly $14 billion in mergers and acquisitions either announced or completed in the merchant-acquiring industry. The number of deals could easily …

Consumer electronics maker Garmin International Inc. said Garmin Pay, based on Fit Pay Inc. technology, is now available to users of Garmin’s vivoactive 3 smart watch. Garmin Pay was announced in August. Fit Pay is a subsidiary of NXT-ID Inc. Automated clearing house network governing body NACHA reported that same-day …

Encryption specialist Bluefin Payment Systems said it will provide encryption services to clients of payments provider Accepta LLC. A report from processor Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) found 25 real-time payments systems in operation globally, up from 19 last year and more than twice the number in 2013. Another …

The current wave of buying and selling is the right prescription at the right time for a business that badly needed shaking up, says O.B. Rawls. For decades, the payments industry was pretty stagnant, but over the past decade, and even more so recently, that has changed drastically. Now part …

Square Inc., which debuted more than seven years ago pursuing micromerchants with a free card reader, launched Square Register, a $999 point-of-sale system designed for larger merchants, it announced Monday. Square Register is a full-sized POS device that has merchant-facing and consumer-facing screens. Also available at $49 a month for …

NCR Corp. is entering the fray to get payment-processing deals with micromerchants. The Duluth, Ga.-based point-of-sale technology company this week launched Ring Up by NCR Silver, a POS service specifically designed for merchants with less than $100,000 in annual revenue. The service uses a magnetic stripe and EMV-compatible Bluetooth reader …

Merchant processor Worldpay participated in a funding round for machine-learning startup FeatureSpace and agreed to deploy the company’s technology for fraud prevention. Worldpay, which this summer agreed to be acquired by rival processor Vantiv Inc., did not disclose the amount of its investment. Merchant processor Elavon introduced Scoop, a program …

Shopify Inc. said it is expanding a service that will let Instagram users buy products from select merchants without leaving the Instagram app. The service, which Shopify has been testing since early this year, lets merchants tag their posts to connect users to their catalogs. The photo-sharing service Instagram, owned by …

 Sysnet CEO, Gabriel Moynagh, explains how replacing revenue from PCI DSS penalties for non-compliance with a managed service offering is the opportunity acquirers have been waiting for in improving customer relationships and boosting merchant security. The worldwide Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) was set up to help …

Google plans soon to give merchants access to the vast trove of credit card credentials it has in its databases to speed customer checkout for mobile and online payments. The search-engine giant, however, is not putting itself in competition with payment card networks, a Google executive said this week. The …