Sixty-two percent of U.S. consumers used a credit card in 2018, up from 60% in 2017, finds a report from Mercator Advisory Group Bestpass Inc., a provider of toll-management services for commercial fleets, said it finished 2018 with 500,000 active transponders in its network of almost 6,000 clients. The fastest …

A subsidiary of Visa Inc. is offering to buy Earthport PLC, a London-based provider of cross-border payments for banks and businesses, for approximately $250 million in cash. The offer represents a 250% premium to Earthport’s six-month average share price ended Dec. 24 and has the endorsement of Earthport’s board of …

The prognostications for 2019 are starting to roll in, and if at least one comes true, we’ll see business-to-business transactions driving the growth of faster-payment systems. And smart phones might actually gain some discernible traction at the point of sale. The predictions come from the big accounting and consulting firm …

First Data Corp. released its Holiday Insights dashboard, which shows real-time U.S. holiday spending trends, such as total spend percentage increase, today’s most active categories with average ticket and total transactions, and regional payment volume. To date, it indicates retail spending from Thanksgiving through Black Friday increased 6.4% year-over-year. Cardfree Inc., …

E-commerce platform 3dcart announced an integration with TradeGecko, a cloud-based inventory-management platform for business-to-business companies. The integration means online retailers can synchronize their 3dcart store with their TradeGecko account, 3dcart said. Payments provider PaySimple announced its services are now available to users of MarketSharp, marketing and management software program for …

In an online question-and-answer session with sellers, eBay Inc. said its new Managed Payments platform will add PayPal as a payment option by next summer. The new platform relies on payments provider Adyen as a gateway to a variety of payments options. E-commerce processor Shopify Inc. reported an operating loss …

Processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) said its Merchant Solutions unit processed 1.53 billion point-of-sale transactions in the third quarter, a 22% increase from 1.26 billion a year earlier. Sales volume rose 30% to $40.9 billion. The Consumer Solutions segment, which includes the Netspend prepaid card operation, posted gross dollar …

Electronic Merchant Systems announced the acquisition of Total Touch POS, a POS system developer for the hospitality industry. Terms were not disclosed. Bank of America Merchant Services, along with First Data Corp., announced it integrated BlueSnap Inc.’s All-in-one Payment Platform into its system. BAMS is the first integration since First …

Among debit card issuers Apple Pay made up 77% of mobile-wallet transactions, Auriemma Consulting Group said in an analysis of mobile wallets. Samsung Pay and Google made up 17% and 6% of transactions, respectively. Rich Consulting and Double Diamond Group launched a suite of services to aid acquirers, independent sales …

Through the years, the network game hasn’t changed. Payment systems need volume, and that means interoperability with other networks. The key is to be smart about it. The payments world is a patchwork of overlapping and interdependent networks. For success, networks need a path or paths to critical mass. For …