Fintech

NEW YORK -- A federal judge this afternoon waved off objections of thousands of merchants groups and granted preliminary aproval to the $7.2 billion antitrust settlement from Visa, MasterCard and a handul of big banks.

Google has reinvented its mobile wallet a few times, and its latest reinvention, a rumored plastic card, raises questions about the mobile-pay product’s direction.

For retailers, buying a new point of sale payment system is becoming as easy as buying a stapler or a sheaf of paper. Staples has begun selling several pieces of hardware revolving around NCR’s point of sale system called Silver.

At first, payments players were wary of the LevelUp mobile-pay system, but the startup behind it is fast building relationships with the very companies it could potentially disrupt.

Hundreds of retailers opposed to Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc.’s proposed $7.25 billion settlement of a merchant fee price-fixing case will try to convince a federal judge the deal should be thrown out.

In an effort to better serve its overseas customers, VeriFone has begun rolling out a version of its mobile payments system, Sail, that accepts EMV-chip cards.

In advance of Veterans Day, Wells Fargo announced that it is committing $35 million over three years to assist current and former members of the U.S. military and allowing its customers to make donations through its ATMs.

Discover Financial Services will pilot Natural Security’s hands-free biometrics payment system at its Riverwoods, Ill., headquarters, the companies announced this week.

Consumer credit increased in September thanks largely to student loan growth but Americans appeared to use their credit cards more sparingly, according to Federal Reserve data released Wednesday.

Several months after Starbucks announced it was investing $25 million in Square, it has begun accepting the mobile-pay company's digital wallet at its roughly 7,000 retail stores.