The 7-year-old startup Affirm Inc. has already signed up more than 2,000 merchants to accept its instant-financing option, but on Wednesday it announced it had bagged the biggest one of all: Walmart Inc. In a move that extends Affirm to the physical point of sale in a major way, users …

New Jersey’s legislature this month passed a bill requiring merchants to accept cash at the point of sale, and several big cities, including New York, are considering similar measures. But does cash really need legal protection from payment cards and mobile wallets? That’s the question public officials as well as …

Cincinnati-based grocery giant The Kroger Co. has launched a proprietary mobile-payments service, Kroger Pay, and an accompanying Kroger Rewards debit card. Kroger Pay, available for iOS and Android mobile devices, is a quick-response code-based mobile-payment service, which also includes digital coupons and personalized offers. Kroger Pay, like some other retailer-backed mobile-payments services, …

The number of U.S. merchant locations accepting EMV chip cards grew nearly 15% in 2018 while EMV payment transactions rose 27%, according to new data from Visa Inc.  In its latest report on the conversion of U.S. general-purpose payment cards from magnetic stripes to EMV chips, Visa says 3.1 million …

Grocer The Kroger Co. launched Kroger Pay and the Kroger Rewards debit card. Kroger Pay, available for iOS and Android mobile devices, is a Quick Response code-based mobile-payment service, which also includes digital coupons and personalized offers. Currently, Kroger Pay is available in Columbus, Ohio, with plans for nationwide expansion …

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 …

New Jersey legislators last week passed a bill with overwhelming support to prevent businesses from banning consumers from using cash for purchases. The bill, which now goes to Gov. Phil Murphy for his signature, would make New Jersey only the second state to protect cash-using customers in stores. The proposed …

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 …

As cash goes, so go ATMs. Cash so far has managed to ward off its many electronic enemies, but it’s playing defense in the payments version of The Hundred Years’ War. What does it all mean for ATM deployers and manufacturers? The leading payment card networks have targeted cash since …

Point-of-sale system maker Lightspeed debuted Lightspeed Payments, a service for in-store and e-commerce payments. The service unifies a merchant’s card-present and card-not-present transaction data into one reporting location within the Lightspeed POS software. Regardless of the card type, merchants pay 2.6% plus 10 cents per card-present payment and 2.6% plus …