Merchant processor Net Element Inc. has a letter of intent to merge with Mullen Technologies Inc., a privately held startup that plans to sell Chinese-made electric sports cars in the U.S. The pending deal, announced Monday, requires Net Element to divest its payment-processing business. The so-called “reverse triangular merger” is …

Four years after the EMV chip card standard became the law of the U.S. payments land, the number of credit and debit cards with an EMV chip now exceeds 1 billion, and 63% of U.S. card-present transactions in 2019 involved an EMV card being read by an EMV-capable terminal, up …

A new report from CardFlight Inc., a point-of-sale technology provider serving more than 60,000 small businesses through its SwipeSimple service, shows merchant activity climbing back to just about where it was in early March when the Covid-19 outbreak began to hit the economy hard. Total sales in the SwipeSimple merchant …

Debit card issuers have a new tool to spot potential false transaction declines with a new service from processor Fiserv Inc., and the authentication needs of mobile payments are driving, in part, the growth in fingerprint sensors. Brookfield, Wis.-based Fiserv says its new Authorization Lift service will help reduce the number …

Fiserv Inc. and the former head of an independent sales organization will pay $40.2 million to settle charges brought by the Federal Trade Commission stemming from alleged illegal actions committed by the ISO from 2012 to 2014 while it obtained processing services from First Data Merchant Services, whose parent company …

All four card brands have now delayed for the second time their EMV liability shifts for automated fuel dispensers with Mastercard Inc.’s Monday announcement it would postpone its shift until April 16. The original shift was to have taken place in October 2017, but was deferred until October 2020. Along …

Even though credit card spending is still depressed as a result of the Covid-19 economic downturn, payment card volume trends have now been improving for a month or more, according to new data from credit-union service organization PSCU. St. Petersburg, Fla.-based PSCU reported Monday that overall credit card spending by …

Payment card manufacturer CPI Card Group Inc. said first-quarter sales of credit and debit cards rose 22% from a year earlier to $59.8 million, driven in part by strong demand for dual-interface EMV cards that support contactless payments. The company reported first-quarter net income of $2.42 million versus a loss of $3.06 …

Contactless payments may finally be gaining further adoption by U.S. consumers. Spurred by prevention efforts in reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic, many consumers—51%—use some form of contactless payment, Mastercard Inc. says. In what may be the most detailed data yet publicly released about U.S. consumers and contactless payments, Mastercard’s survey …

Mastercard Inc. managed to remain profitable in the first quarter as the Covid-19 pandemic began to sweep the world, and its volume and transaction data for April indicate a possible bottoming out of the steep decline in consumer and business spending. U.S. dollar volume switched over Mastercard’s network in the …