With its pending $750 million acquisition of The Western Union Co.’s bill-pay subsidiary Speedpay Inc., payment-software and processing provider ACI Worldwide Inc. will gain control of a profitable operation that made a name for itself in expedited payments. “Speedpay invented the expedited-payments market,” says Richard K. Crone, chief executive of …

Staying on top in payments requires close attention to a few ironclad rules, say Saurabh Wahi and Davis Ward. In the fourth annual Prophet Brand Relevance Index (BRI), PayPal Holdings Inc. was once again, and by far, the best-performing financial-services brand. It’s not just that it continues to outperform such …

Its $22-billion megamerger agreement with First Data sets it up to be a dominant player on both the bank and merchant sides of payments. How will the industry react? Executives at Fiserv Inc. all but popped champagne corks on Feb. 7 when they spoke to industry analysts about the Brookfield, …

Efforts to ban cashless stores are afoot in New Jersey and some of the nation’s largest cities, including New York. But does cash really need legal protection from payment cards and mobile wallets? That’s the question public officials as well as payments and retail executives are mulling. Opponents of cashless …

When news broke in mid-January that Fiserv Inc. had offered to buy First Data Corp. in an all-stock transaction, we knew instantly we had our cover story. The trouble was, our February issue was already buttoned up, so we knew we’d have to wait for March. As often happens, this …

ACI Worldwide has agreed to lay out $750 million in cash to buy Speedpay Inc., the digital bill-payment business that has been part of The Western Union Co. for 17 years. The deal, announced early Thursday, will bulk up ACI’s bill-payment processing business at a time when trends like digital …

For all the talk about financial-technology firms and non-bank processors encroaching on banks’ turf, acquiring banks still outdo the upstarts when it comes to having satisfied merchant customers, according to J.D. Power’s first in-depth study of the merchant-acquiring industry. The online study of 3,500 small businesses nationwide last October and …

SuiteRetail, a Wilmington, Del.-based point-of-sale software developer, completed integration of  Stripe Inc.’s merchant-processing services into its apps, giving merchants the ability to use Stripe for their in-store and online transactions. Merchants using SuiteRetail’s SuitePOS for NetSuite or Salesforce now can complete their online processor and store set-up for Stripe. The …

The global processor Worldpay Inc. is beating its own expectations in knitting together the assets combined in the huge merger of Vantiv Inc. and Worldpay plc and is looking to make more acquisitions this year, top executives said Tuesday. Speaking to stock analysts to discuss Cincinnati-based Worldpay’s fourth-quarter and full-year …

A bevy of fees levied by the two major card networks is offsetting much of the fee relief merchants receive from the 7-year-old Durbin Amendment, according to new findings from a payments-research firm that is studying the issue on behalf of the retail industry. While the Durbin caps on debit …