Merchant

Visa Canada plans to offer real-time B2B and B2C disbursements via its Visa Direct card-to-card transfer service, competing head-on with Canada's Interac network and a product Mastercard launched in the country earlier this year.

For many borrowers, near-guaranteed approvals and faster turnaround times are more important than the lower rates offered by banks and credit unions.

Seacoast in Florida slashed the time it took to make 7(a) loans within months after establishing a partnership with an online lending startup.

This month, Vancouver became the first Canadian city to commercially roll out open transit payments. But the city of Laval actually got a head start on Vancouver with a pilot project that is getting a positive reaction from riders.

Adobe Systems Inc. agreed to buy e-commerce company Magento for $1.68 billion, in a bid to capture a bigger slice of the digital-commerce industry from Salesforce.com Inc. and Oracle Corp.

The Chicago company will close 19 branches and eliminate 150 jobs, partially reflecting changing customer preferences.

Development is happening in places besides London and Silicon Valley, and that will give payment companies and financial institutions a wider range of technology solutions and partners, according to Aidan Hayes, senior vice president of financial services and technology for Enterprise Ireland.

The company said the move would help it become more efficient at a time when clients are making greater use of digital channels.

E-commerce payment fraud losses are mounting, giving merchants the opportunity to dump responsibility on their technology partners, but there's no surefire way to totally offload the financial hit.

With the use of global standards, merchants can also strengthen and consolidate their relationships with vendors and minimize expenditure on hardware and software solutions and maintenance, writes Normand Provost, liaison chair of Nexo.