Payments provider Clearent LLC is buying Payment Alliance International’s merchant-services division, which serves more than 17,000 merchants, for an undisclosed amount, Clearent announced Wednesday. The deal adds $4.2 billion in processing volume to Clearent, pushing the combined entity’s total processing volume to $14 billion and its total number of merchants …

Point-of-sale terminal maker Ingenico Group is among many payments companies making announcements Monday at the National Retail Federation’s annual Big Show in New York City. France-based Ingenico says its ePayments division and its research arm Ingenico Labs now offer payment-enabled messaging bots for e-commerce merchants. Bots are an artificial intelligence …

Contactless cards were tried in the U.S. years ago and soon fell by the wayside, giving the technology a black eye among issuers. Now a report released Monday in the U.K., where contactless is catching on fast, could revive hopes for the technology. Some 325 million debit and credit card …

Marketing campaigns delivered to shoppers’ smart phones have long been seen as a promising way to drive both in-store traffic and mobile payments, and during the recent holiday season one company ran a test to find out just what kind of results retailers could expect. Swirl Networks Inc., a 6-year-old …

First Data Corp.’s newest division, the Integrated Solutions Group, is designed to entice software developers to create tools that hook into the giant processor’s payments platform. Announced Friday, the division is meant to foster ties between the Atlanta-based processor and independent software vendors, value-added resellers, software developers, and systems integrators. …

By Jim Daly @DTPaymentNews JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s merchant-processing subsidiary surpassed $1 trillion in payment volume last year, the New York City-based banking giant reported Friday. Chase Commerce Solutions, the No. 2 U.S. merchant acquirer after First Data Corp. and the biggest acquirer owned by a banking firm, posted merchant-processing …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Bank and non-bank players alike are scrambling to claim a share of the peer-to-peer payments market, and a report released this week explains why: adoption is hot and getting hotter. Slightly more than one-third of U.S. consumers made at least one transaction last year, up from …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews If loyalty programs are the key to boosting usage of new payments methods like mobile wallets, ease of rewards redemption could be even more critical. On Wednesday, terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc. took a step in that direction by expanding the reach of its Points Redemption …

Founded in 1990 as the national trade group of independent sales organizations, the Electronic Transactions Association is taking on a decidedly technology-oriented hue as the payments industry rapidly evolves. The ETA announced last week that an Apple Inc. executive was elected to a two-year term on its board of directors, …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews For the second time in less than two months, a major payments case is coming before the Supreme Court. On Tuesday, lawyers for merchants and the state of New York will argue before the eight justices over whether the state’s ban on credit card surcharges constitutes illegal …