E-commerce processor Shopify Inc. opened its first brick-and-mortar “entrepreneur space” in downtown Los Angeles. The site will provide in-person support, training, and education to Shopify merchants, and the company’s suite of retail hardware products will be available. Shopify says it has 10,000 merchants in L.A. and 80,000 in California. Cybersecurity …

Payments and software provider SpotOn Transact LLC  acquired EmaginePOS, a vendor of point-of-sale software for restaurants and bars. Terms were not announced. Business-services provider CSG Systems International Inc. bought Forte Payment Systems Inc., an independent sales organization, for an undisclosed amount. Credit and debit card information of more than 28,000 …

Competition from faster payments pushed the automated clearing house to introduce same-day processing, but now the ACH may well turn the tables, says Sarah Grotta. It has been a year since same-day ACH (SDA) credits and debits have been available in the United States. Here’s a quick refresher of SDA …

Wire-transfer provider MoneyGram International Inc. once again is expanding to more markets. This time, the company announced Monday, consumers in Ireland, Poland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark are the latest to have access to the company’s online platform. MoneyGram’s online service is now available in 15 nations. In July, it expanded …

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 …

Beyond, the payments company started by Robert O. Carr in 2017, purchased Boosterville for an undisclosed amount. The company provides a service that connects nonprofit organizations with local merchants. Boosterville has been rebranded Chip-In. Visa Inc. and wire-transfer provider MoneyGram International Inc. said they teamed up to enable cross-border remittances using …

Representatives of large retailers including Walmart Inc. and Home Depot Inc. met with federal regulators this week to voice their concerns about a common buy button for e-commerce under development by the major card networks, The Wall Street Journal reported. The retailers’ main concern reportedly is how a buy button …

Financial institutions have been pushing real-time payments because they are supposed to be not only faster but also more cost-efficient. But now results of a global survey released Monday indicate merchants not only expect faster payments to be less expensive to accept, but also to displace the payment cards banks …

Visa Inc. and PayPal Holdings Inc. have extended to Canada an agreement they made in 2016 that gives PayPal access to Visa’s tokenization engine in return for promoting Visa products for PayPal account funding. In related news, Visa said it is expanding its Visa Direct service in Canada, with processor …

Since its official launch last June, Zelle has been all about carving out a healthy piece of the burgeoning person-to-person payments market for financial institutions. Now it’s promoting another service that leverages its network but could prove far more lucrative: disbursements. When companies, associations, or other organizations need to pay …