Technology

As major payments M&A deals mount, some free agents are awaiting deals of their own — and one area where that’s most apparent is in debit and ATM networks.

Payment preferences significantly vary from region to region, making the need to cater to local payment methods crucial, according to Steve Villegas, vice president of partner management at PPRO.

Wells Fargo and the denial stage of recovery; community bankers alarmed after big banks backtrack on faster-payments pricing; credit card, auto loan delinquencies hit seven-year high; and more from this week's most-read stories.

PayU is expanding its umbrella of payment companies in developing markets in a $70 million deal to buy Wibmo, a Cupertino, Calif.-based digital payments company that integrates with banks in 20 countries for payment authentication and security.

The initial public offering of payment-service company Nexi SpA raised 2.01 billion euros ($2.3 billion), making it the biggest listing in Europe so far this year and the third major IPO of a payment-processing institution in the region in less than a year.

CariClub crunches employee data to connect young banking professionals with nonprofits on the hunt for junior directors.

Transactions along the supply chain are a particularly good use case, argues Vinay Pai, senior vice president of engineering at Bill.com.

Arguments that the central bank should develop its own system for faster payments ignore current market realities, says The Clearing House, which has developed its own network.

A hacker can infect multiple point-of-sale terminals with malware by entering through a "smart" coffee vending machine at a grocery store or restaurant. And the store owners are largely unaware of the risk.

As Gen Z and the generations that succeed them begin to use financial services, digital capabilities become a must-have rather than a nice-to-have. By planning now, irrelevance in the near future can be avoided, writes John Mitchell, CEO of Episode Six.