Merchant-processing revenues from North America grew 7% year-over-year in 2018’s fourth quarter to $1.1 billion on a comparable accounting basis, First Data Corp. reported Wednesday. First Data, which has an agreement to be acquired by processor Fiserv Inc. in a $22 billion all-stock deal, reported total quarterly revenues of $1.42 …

Want to start—or bet on—the next big thing in payments? Forget glitz and glamor and focus on startups that address pressing problems with substantial and realistic solutions, argues Eric Grover. Successful payments fintechs such as Adyen, Ant Financial, Klarna, Stripe, and Square have generated enormous excitement. With the arguable exception …

Benefitting from a built-in customer connection, retailer wallets adroitly tap into shoppers’ purchasing habits in ways unavailable to the big tech wallets. Retailer mobile wallets are proliferating in part because the consumer can get something that she can’t with any of the tech-based apps. That is a high degree of …

So-called smart devices are invading the point of sale at an increasing pace. They bring undoubted advantages, but also a few complications. Judging by the number of times Fiserv Inc. chief executive Jeffery Yabuki and First Data Corp. CEO Frank Bisignano mentioned Clover last month during their joint announcement of …

Apple Inc. on Tuesday announced Target Corp., Taco Bell, and two regional chains are the latest merchants to agree to accept Apple Pay in-store, a development that could bolster the mobile-payments service and further smooth the road for contactless payments in the United States. Separately, Target announced it will also …

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 …

Restaurants are a coveted merchant segment for many acquirers and independent sales organizations. So, knowing how payments are changing and the impact that might have on this merchant segment is critical. First off, in 2019, the prospect for more consumers carrying, and wanting to use, contactless credit and debit cards …

A big office lease in downtown Oakland, Calif., suggests merchant processor Square Inc. is about to embark on a big expansion. Square on Thursday signed a lease for an entire 356,000-square-foot building that once was a Sears department store and after that was briefly owned by the ride-sharing firm Uber. …

Thales’s proposed all-cash acquisition of rival Gemalto received merger-control regulatory clearance by the European Commission. Effective immediately, the clearance is conditioned on Thales’s agreement to divest its general-purpose hardware security modules business worldwide. The deal still must clear regulatory hurdles in five other countries, including the United States. Bluefin Payment …