The financial news has been full of dire stories about the beating tech stocks have been taking lately, but less well publicized is the action in private equity—specifically the creation of new payments-related unicorns. According to data from New York City-based CB Insights, which tracks private valuations, at least half …

It was a nasty December and fourth quarter, but transaction-processor stocks still beat the major market indexes in 2018, according to an analysis by Barrington Research Associates Inc. Twenty-six publicly traded processor stocks posted a mean return of 3.01% for the year versus a negative mean return of 6.24% for …

To make faster payments a reality, decades-old core systems have to be streamlined. Here’s an approach that relies on artificial intelligence to avoid the system overhauls that have been tried in the past. The Federal Reserve’s faster-payments initiative has created a catalyst to improve core systems to respond to the …

Talk about mobile payments. Card companies, automakers, and merchants are readying technology to make cars a payment method as familiar as plastic—and phones. An informal consortium of payments companies, car makers, automotive suppliers, and merchants is trying to make it easier, and safer, for consumers to buy fuel, order meals, …

Cash discounts are all the rage as merchants seek to lower payment card acceptance costs. But critics say cash discounts all too often are surcharges in disguise. Few topics last year drew more interest from independent sales organizations and merchant acquirers than cash discounts. Sessions about the pricing strategy were …

In a marriage of convenience, movie and TV streaming service Hulu LLC says it now accepts PayPal Holdings Inc.’s Venmo peer-to-peer payment service. Hulu could be a major win in PayPal’s ongoing effort to increase the popular Venmo’s profitability because the service will generate a recurring revenue stream. For Santa …

Adoption and usage rates for the mobile wallets from Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc. (Google), and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. have been far from stellar, but now evidence is emerging that Apple’s decision a year ago to ditch fingerprint identification on its newest smart phones in favor of facial-recognition technology could …

It was only a matter of time before the stars lined up to put digital-payment capability into automobiles. After all, where do U.S. consumers spend their time when not at rest? And what has been their favorite pastime, after sports, politics, or videogaming? As senior editor Kevin Woodward explains in …

Merchants have come a long way since the inception of the Merchant Advisory Group, but far more needs to be done to restore some semblance of balance in payments. Upon reflection, it is remarkable that traditional merchants had no formal means to get together to discuss payments until the MAG …

Click2Gov, a software application popular among municipalities for processing online payments of utility bills and fees, has been compromised in 46 U.S. cities and one Canadian location, according to an analysis released this week by Gemini Advisory. The New York City-based data-security firm estimates 294,929 payment card records have been …