A handful of arcane mathematicians way back in the 18th and 19th centuries aspired to invent a useless mathematical theory that would shine for its beauty alone, unstained by practical applications. It was called number theory, and it stood useless and shining until late in the 20th Century, when this …

• The Federal Trade Commission is investigating PayPal Holdings Inc.’s popular Venmo mobile person-to-person payments service for possible “deceptive or unfair practices,” PayPal reported in a regulatory filing. PayPal said it received a so-called civil investigative demand March 28 from the FTC for documents and answers to written questions about …

The coming of same-day settlement of automated clearing house transactions to the U.S. next September has many bank and credit-union executives excited about the prospect of faster payments. But fears about more fraud are rising, too. A recent survey of approximately 60 financial institutions by New York City-based fraud-control firm …

It may have started with the likes of PayPal Holdings Inc. and Square Inc., but it isn’t stopping there. Having made their mark in merchant processing, high-tech payments firms are increasingly turning their attention to the business of offering funding to the merchants they serve. The move is bringing them …

• The PCI Security Standards Council said it will publish version 3.2 of the Payment Card Industry data-security standard this Thursday. • Ziosk LLC, a provider of tablets for at-table payment in restaurants, announced deals with several entertainment providers for new content on its installed base of 170,000 devices. • …

• Global Payments Inc.’s $4.3 billion acquisition of processor Heartland Payment Systems Inc. closed Monday, Global Payments said. The deal, announced in December, gives the combined company more than 8,500 employees and provides services to almost 2.5 million merchants around the world. • Processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) renewed …

• SuperCom Ltd., an Israel-based identity-verification company, bought PowaPOS, the tablet-based point-of-sale unit of Powa Technologies Ltd., a commerce company that floundered. Powa’s two other units, PowaWeb and PowaTag, already have been sold. • American Express Co. reported $176.3 billion in U.S. card-billed business during the first quarter, up 4% from a …

• The Merchants Payments Coalition, a lobbying group for merchants on payment issues, attacked a Harvard University research paper as “just plain wrong” after the paper argued the debit-interchange caps in the Durbin Amendment to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act drove up banking costs for consumers. • Terminal maker Ingenico Group …

• Fidelity National Information Services Inc. and The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC announced they will launch a pilot for real-time payments in the first quarter of next year. The system will focus initially on bill payments and will use FIS technology along with The Clearing House’s real-time payment platform. …

Universal mobile wallets have yet to gain the hearty embrace of merchants and consumers, unlike those serving a solitary merchant. But that will change, forecasts the “Merchant Mobile Wallets: Mobile Payments in Action” report released Wednesday by Mercator Advisory Group Inc. The report from the Maynard, Mass.-based payments consultancy predicts …