As payment companies expand ways for consumers to make digital payments, 62% of North American merchants, bankers, and fintech providers expect more such payments within the next two years, says Forrester Research Inc. in its “Understanding the Evolving Payments Landscape” report released Monday. Commissioned by Visa Inc., the report also found …

Consumers are making more debit card transactions without the physical card, and fraudsters are taking notice, according to a major study released Thursday. Transactions such as e-commerce payments, push payments, and peer-to-peer transfers using the accounts backing debit cards, but not the plastic itself, are rising dramatically, according to the …

In what may be the biggest anticlimax in their careers, employees at First Data Corp. will walk into their offices Monday morning as employees of Fiserv Inc. And if Fiserv chief executive Jeffery Yabuki’s ambitions prove fruitful, the combined company will play a leading role in fending off nonbanks like …

The Zelle peer-to-peer payments network is starting to click for the smaller, everyday transfers it was designed to handle. Early Warning Services LLC, the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based banking-technology company that runs the 2-year-old network, reported on Tuesday that Zelle handled $44 billion in volume in the second quarter on 171 million …

PayPal Holdings Inc. added Instant Transfer capability for individuals and small businesses in Canada. The move relies on Visa Direct, a real-time push-payments service. Announced Tuesday, the service can move money from a PayPal account to a bank account via a Visa debit card. All transfers are subject to a …

For banks, introducing real-time bill pay is not enough. They must also spruce up the online and mobile experience. Some are starting to, but can they finally leave the biller-direct model in the dust? It’s been a long, steady retreat for banks in online bill payment. Since 2010, banks’ share …

It’s been almost a decade since Square piled into the merchant-acquiring industry. How much disruption did this upstart cause? It’s late April of 2010 at automated clearing house governing body NACHA’s annual conference in the Seattle convention center. On stage before an audience of 2,000 bankers and other mostly buttoned-down …

Facebook Inc. has said it will turn over control of its Libra cryptocurrency initiative to a consortium of companies that will constitute the Libra Association. But one related property the massive social network will retain, albeit as an arm’s-length subsidiary, is its new Calibra unit, which will run Facebook’s own …

Most economic activity with Bitcoin remains on trading exchanges, but lately there is some evidence volume at merchants may be picking up. Bitcoin’s total merchant volume, in dollar terms, was $42.8 million in the week ended May 19, according to the latest figures from Chainalysis Inc., a New York City-based …

There’s much more to PayPal Holdings Inc. than Venmo, but that’s where the payments industry’s spotlight has shone in recent years. Still, in spite of all the attention it gets, Venmo had always kept one thing secret: how many active users it has. Late in April, PayPal lifted the veil. …