With the closing of three megamergers this year, one might think investment opportunities in payments and acquiring could shrink. But that would be an error. That was the assessment of investment professionals speaking Thursday at the Western States Acquirers Association annual conference in Rancho Mirage, Calif.  “It’s a massive industry. …

Global Payments Inc. completed its $21.5 billion all-stock merger with payment processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS). The deal cleared its last major hurdle when European Union antitrust regulators said they had no competition concerns, Reuters reported Tuesday. The merged company serves 3.5 million merchant locations and 1,300 financial institutions in more than 100 …

Corporate treasurers can identify numerous use cases for real-time or otherwise faster payments, but they do worry about transaction security, according to the Association for Financial Professionals. Some 60% of respondents surveyed in the AFP’s newly released 2019 payments study said business-to-business transactions will benefit the most from faster and …

Many payment executives regard the United States as a mature market compared with high-growth countries in Asia and Latin America, but it still has plenty of untapped opportunities, according to Mastercard Inc. executives. Its home country remains Mastercard’s largest market. As of 2018, the U.S. accounted for 33% of Mastercard’s …

With card-based transit payments picking up steam in the United States, a key Mastercard Inc. executive said Thursday that 22% of the network’s physical-world transactions globally were contactless as of the end of 2018. The time to complete a contactless transaction is down to 0.4 seconds, added Ajay Bhalla, president …

As the payment-facilitator model matures, hundreds of thousands of fintech and software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies worldwide are realizing they can provide a better customer experience and increase revenues and valuation by becoming a payment facilitator (PF). We’re seeing companies spanning every imaginable software vertical take over their payments business.  Companies like …

In 2011, Marc Andreessen wrote his now-famous article, Software is Eating the World, which predicted that software companies would “take over large swaths of the economy.” Due to the wide adoption of broadband, mobile, and cloud-computing technology, Andreessen pointed out that the ingredients were in place for a huge boom …

Southwest Airlines will join the roster of merchants that accept Apple Pay, according to an announcement Wednesday from CellPoint Digital and UATP. UATP, the airline-owned payment network, and CellPoint Digital, a travel industry payments specialist, said Dallas-based Southwest will make Apple Pay available across all channels to buy tickets and …

Now that the Fed’s so-called public option is no longer a matter of speculation, the race is on to dominate a crucial payments market. But in real-time transactions, will the race go to the swift? After 10 months of playing it coy, the Federal Reserve early last month finally jumped …

The U.S. House of Representatives’ Task Force on Financial Technology will hold a hearing Sept. 26 on “The Future of Real-Time Payments.” The task force was created in May by U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee.Housecall Pro, a software platform for home-service technicians, launched My …