• Wireless payments specialist Apriva announced a new vending payment product for Canada that enables contactless payments and chip card transactions. • Point-of-sale equipment and services distributor POS Portal announced that it and processor Vantiv Inc. have simplified the equipment-distribution process for merchants, value-added resellers, and independent software vendors using the processor’s services. • Credit-union …

• Payments-technology provider VeriFone Systems Inc. said it created a 50-50 joint venture with Gas Station TV that will combine VeriFone’s Pump Media division with Gas Station TV; the venture will operate under the Gas Station TV brand and deliver 3.3 billion annual impressions through 18,000 locations in all 50 states by …

• The Western Union Co. said it has integrated Apple Pay into its mobile app, allowing U.S. customers to use the mobile-payments service to fund money transfers to more than 200 countries and territories, including domestic bill payments. More than 60% of digital-money transfers on Western Union’s network are initiated on …

• China-based Ant Financial Services Group’s $880 million bid for wire-transfer provider MoneyGram International Inc. is generating increasing opposition in Congress on national-security grounds, according to press reports from Washington. U.S.-based Euronet Worldwide Inc. last month submitted an unsolicited $1 billion bid for MoneyGram. • Avangate, a subscription-management and e-commerce platform, announced …

• Samsung Electronics Co.’s soon-to-be-released Galaxy S8 smart phone will employ facial-recognition technology for mobile payments, including the company’s

• In separate blog posts, PayPal Holdings Inc. executive vice president Bill Ready and chief executive Dan Schulman reported the company has reached 200 million total consumer, merchant, and charity accounts. They also said the PayPal’s One Touch authentication technology has signed up 50 million consumers and more than 5 million merchant accounts, …

• Puerto Rico-based Evertec Inc. said revenue in its merchant-acquiring unit declined 1% in the fourth quarter to $23.1 million while revenue in its payment-processing segment grew 0.4% to $28.9 million. Evertec announced it has an agreement to buy Chile-based EFT Group S.A., a payment processor and software company that uses the …

• Merchant processor SignaPay Ltd. announced the official launch of its PayLo software, which allows merchants to collect what the company calls a “small” service fee on each transaction processed on merchants’ point-of-sale terminals. The fee is waived if the customer uses cash or a gift card. SignaPay says the software is …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews The lingering impact of some retailers’ slow conversion to EMV chip card acceptance continued to plague prepaid card services provider Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. in the fourth quarter. Blackhawk reported late Wednesday that revenues fell short of its expectations in part because of a “continued EMV headwind” …

• Merchant processor iPayment Inc. will offer business services to its client base from cloud-based provider Company.com under a new agreement between the companies. • Merchant processor Fidelity Payment Services has selected PAX Technology as its preferred provider of EMV terminals and PIN pads. • Virtual Piggy Inc. announced it is working with …