U.S.

While many Americans and Europeans are comfortable using biometric authentication to access their smartphones and bank accounts, the real leader in biometric adoption for payments is actually the government of India.

The Clearing House announced moves to attract community banks and credit unions to its real-time payments system. Smaller depositories have generally been reluctant to sign up with what is seen as a large-bank effort.

U.S. lawmakers are not enthusiastic about the cashless trend being driven by the likes of Amazon Go, sweetgreen, and numerous other merchants of all sizes.

As more U.S. e-commerce merchants look to accept cross-border payments, they must contend with payment processes that are less straightforward than they are used to — but which consumers have come to expect.

Fleet card and virtual card technology provider WEX plans to acquire the Go Fuel Card business from fuel station and convenience store retailer EG Card.

Despite some significant advancements in the past two years, rifts are already developing in the U.S. move to faster payments.

Until recently, biometric ATMs were very hard to find in developed markets other than Brazil, India and Japan.

The FIS-Worldpay merger is the largest international payments deal to date, significantly topping the recent Fiserv-First Data merger that turned heads at the beginning of the year. But the FIS deal’s strategic implications could be more interesting than the raw numbers.

Recent data from the National Credit Union Administration breaks down which states surged and which states struggled in 2018.

Given the size of the deal — which includes about $9 billion of Worldpay’s debt on top of a $34 billion bid — the pressure’s on to build a global powerhouse that can counter other major fintech mergers announced in the past weeks. FIS must also emerge as a nimble rival to the startups that threaten the old order.