Visa

The acquisition will vastly expand Visa's platform, giving it nearly Amazon-like influence.

Before Visa agreed to acquire data company Plaid for $5.3 billion, Mastercard had been pulling ahead in the race among the card brands to break beyond reliance on basic processing fees.

Visa is ready to go all-in on Secure Remote Commerce, the technology behind the card brands' universal "click to pay" button, by starting to phase out the Visa Checkout brand for U.S. merchants on Jan. 21.

Bank beats estimates as earning soar 21%; a cyberattack on the American banking system could create havoc on financial stability.

In the battle to control consumer data, Visa has made a major score by agreeing to acquire Plaid, a technology company that it could have seen grow into a competitor.

In the battle to control consumer data, Visa has made a major score by agreeing to acquire Plaid, a technology company that it could have seen grow into a competitor.

The purchase price is double the fintech's valuation in a 2018 funding round.

Samsung's upcoming XCover Pro phone, which can accept contactless payments without add-on hardware, is the first of what Visa hopes will be many devices capable of natively handling NFC payments.

Though many merchants remain wary of alienating their customers with fees, others now see an opportunity to recoup the growing costs associated with accepting plastic.

2019 kicked off with a series of large, multibillion-dollar acquisitions that promised to forever change the landscape of the payments industry. And while those big deals were clustered at the start of the year, many other pivotal deals took place over the course of the year.