Mobile-payments specialist xPressTap Inc. launched its Tap2App product that enables merchants to accept contactless card payments wirelessly using a near-field communication-equipped mobile device. American Express Co. said it now provides an integrated service to MineralTree, an accounts-payable service, to ease business-to-business payments. Payments provider Integrity Payment Systems announced a partnership with Operation First Response, a …

How often do you pause to reflect on the pace of change in the electronic-payments business? Yes, we’re all quite busy, so such moments are rare. But they are instructive. A couple of decades ago, the notion of paying merchants with a debit card linked to a checking account and …

Slowly but surely, a new version of the Bitcoin digital currency was emerging early Tuesday in what appeared to be the start of a hard fork in the Bitcoin code. The fork is expected to yield a parallel blockchain to support the new cryptocurrency, which is known as Bitcoin Cash. …

Payments veteran and Harbortouch founder Jared Isaacman announced the formation of Lighthouse Network LLC, a company that will provide shared services, such as payment processing, merchant-support responsibilities, and corporate functions to Harbortouch, and eventually other brands, which could be acquired through strategic means, a Lighthouse Network spokesman said. Isaacman said in a press …

Fraudsters are hitting fuel pumps hard as they hunt for the dwindling number of places where they can take advantage of magnetic-stripe payments while EMV chip card acceptance takes hold in U.S. stores and restaurants. Last week, fleet-fueling payment card specialist WEX Inc. revealed that it increased its second-quarter provision …

Enabling cross-border payments for e-commerce transactions will take on greater importance if forecasts hold true. That means payments companies wanting to serve these merchants will have to adopt services that accommodate international payments. While U.S. and Canadian consumers will spend an estimated $72.7 billion on cross-border e-commerce in 2017, that …

Millennials don’t care for or trust the traditional advertising tactics that have been a staple of the payments industry for eons—84% say they don’t like them at all. For consumer-facing brands, the implications of these findings are quite significant—particularly since cultivating and rewarding customer loyalty is a foundational marketing element. …

Mastercard Inc. reported Thursday that its switched transaction volume grew 17% in the second quarter. Meanwhile, Discover Financial Services’ Pulse debit network saw volume jump 15% after growing slightly in the first quarter following a long period of decline. Purchase, N.Y.-based Mastercard said its transaction count hit 16 billion versus …

PayPal Holdings Inc. has changed in ways large and small since Dan Schulman took over as chief executive two years ago, but perhaps its biggest change is its willingness to embrace collaboration with financial institutions, payment networks, and others once seen as keen rivals. At least some vindication of that …

The number of payment facilitators is growing rapidly, with technology platforms and independent software vendors alike increasingly taking on the role. Yet confusion remains about just how a payment facilitator—or payfac, in industry parlance—differs from a conventional merchant acquirer or even from a marketplace. That confusion clouds the responsibilities payfacs …