Prepaid card payments provider InComm announced it has acquired Gift Card Impressions, a provider of gift card packaging and solutions. Terms were not announced. Payments processor Adyen announced a direct application programming interface integration with Mastercard Inc.’s Account Updater service. Visa Inc. announced two initiatives to aid financial technology companies in …

Payments industry veteran Dan Henry has been named chairman of 3PEA International Inc., a prepaid card program manager. President and chief executive Mark Newcomer, who co-founded the company and has served as chairman since 2006, will become vice chairman. Henry was until recently chief executive of prepaid card specialist NetSpend, …

A new entry in the arena for payments-related acquisitions, Syncapay, is targeting specialists in disbursements and payouts. Plano, Texas-based Syncapay debuted last week with the intent to acquire payments companies that could benefit from shared services, while retaining the autonomy that differentiates them. “We are not looking at doing a …

The U.S. is finally moving toward faster and more secure payments, but the process is far more deliberate than it needs to be. Look at Australia for an example of how it could be done better. Observers of the U.S. payments industry can be forgiven for wondering—in the wake of …

We list 37 entries this year, of which only three appeared in our original Guide nine years ago. This year’s Field Guide represents our 10th annual effort to catalog the broad currents in electronic payments by listing some of the more salient players providing alternatives to the big network brands. …

Payments companies wondering how digital payments will evolve and what impact today’s younger consumers might have as they age may want to consider the role of apps, suggests the “Future of Money Study 2018” from Koski Research Inc. San Francisco-based Koski, in research that included 1,000 U.S. adults and a …

Will additional embedded features in the new universal cards move them ahead in the age of digital wallets? People may have to forget the failures of the earlier generation first. Getting consumers to carry more than one credit or debit card has been the goal of most issuers for the …

Wave-and-pay flopped when issuers tried it 10 years ago with mag-stripe cards. Now it’s staging a comeback with EMV and mobile payments. The sequel just might be better than the original, but showtime is uncertain. After years of false starts and overenthusiastic hopes, the U.S. just might be about to connect …

Amazon.com Inc.’s interest in launching a checking-account-like product, reported last month by The Wall Street Journal, could have deep roots in its strategy both for payments in general and for Amazon Pay, the payment wallet it operates for non-Amazon sites, expert observers say. Talks between the Seattle-based retailing colossus and …

If the payments industry needed further evidence that the EMV frenzy unleashed in the United States in 2015 is cooling off, it can find it in the fourth-quarter 2017 and full-year results posted Monday by CPI Card Group, one of the country’s chief manufacturers of chip cards. U.S. sales of …