Kate Fitzgerald

A group of U.K. merchants has joined a lawsuit against Visa and Mastercard seeking damages over interchange fees the card networks levied on credit and debit transactions.

The millennial generation — defined by some as consumers 18 to 36 years old — has shifted the expectations for how banks and retailers approach payments. Here are some of the trends driven by this tech-savvy demographic.

As with anything high-tech, early predictions held that millennial men would be first to adopt mobile wallets. But two new research studies are casting doubt on the assumptions about the roles gender and age are playing in the mobile payments adoption curve.

Boston-based Flywire has made another move to diversify beyond its original cross-border tuition payments niche by acquiring Pace Invoice, a multi-currency invoicing platform enabling clients to more easily link outgoing cross-border invoices with incoming receivables.

Several leading banks and corporations in Spain are launching a cross-industry development platform called Red Lyra, leveraging blockchain technology to streamline the creation of services that use digital identities.

The use case for U.S. Bank’s Voyager fuel card is expanding to cover electric vehicle charging through a new partnership.

In the elite card sector, issuers have been aggressively honing their rewards programs and offering hefty bonuses to those who switch. It's a golden opportunity to win the long-term spending of a wealthy customer base, but only if banks can keep those customers on board after the sparkle fades from that initial offer.

Singapore’s Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. (OCBC) will soon expand acceptance of its person-to-person mobile payments app to local merchants.

SkyShopper enables Emirates NBD’s credit and debit card customers to make purchases from retailers through a single portal.

The consortium joins a growing list of cross-industry groups exploring uses for distributed ledger technology.

The integration is designed to improve user experience for international transactions.

Pangea’s instant-transfer app serves six Latin American countries and it’s eyeing expansion to Asia, with a formula based on speed and simplicity.

Dunkin’ Donuts has added Masterpass as a payment method within its mobile app, giving consumers more options for streamlined checkout.

Contactless cards are becoming the global standard for most markets except in the U.S., where tap-to-pay card distribution lags far behind the rest of the world, according to the Smart Payment Association (SPA), a Munich-based organization that tracks global card manufacturer data.

Klarna, the Sweden-based online lending provider, is changing its name to Klarna Bank, part of a series of recent moves in its market underscoring the rising popularity of instant or installment financing.

Ria Money Transfer is significantly expanding its presence in India through partnerships with three leading cash remittance payout agents with broad reach within India, the world’s largest recipient of migrant remittances.

Business-to-business payments technology company Comdata has unveiled a new tool to streamline the process for entering suppliers’ virtual credit card details into their systems.

Nigeria-based United Bank for Africa (UBA) has introduced a Mastercard debit card available via instant-issue at its branches in Cameroon in a new phase of its push to expand debit usage throughout Africa.

The U.K.’s Payment Systems Regulator is escalating its inquiry into the role banks play in preventing money-transfer scams where consumers are tricked into sending funds to fraudsters.

U.S. Bank has added Masterpass support for Android users, joining a growing number of banks that have adopted the digital wallet for in-store and in-app purchases.