Payment processing

If e-invoicing were adopted by more organizations, many of the issues that currently cause late payments would naturally evaporate, leaving leaders more resources to seek out and identify opportunities for business improvement in this year and beyond, writes Richard Hurwitz, CEO of Tungsten Network.

The company plans to move into more retail payment processing as part of a broader diversification strategy that includes the acquisition of Cayan.

Bitcoin has lost touch with its original mission of being an alternative decentralized currency, and Stripe has decided that it is no longer worth supporting for payments.

The client groups aim to take an active role in shaping the future of payments.

Paytronix Systems has received a $65 million private equity investment from Great Hill Partners to power its development of payment and loyalty systems for restaurants.

Adyen BV, a Dutch financial technology company backed by Silicon Valley billionaires, is poised to pick JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley to advise on a potential initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter.

While most Generation X-ers have been accustomed to learning new technologies, mainly through interacting with early adopters, they aren’t always enthusiastic about learning new systems, writes Hamidreza Ghanbari, CEO of Pilatus Bank.

Through an arrangement with First Data and JCB International, Discover will expand its card acceptance at merchant locations in Hong Kong to better accommodate travelers carrying Discover cards.

OnPlan serves the education and health care industries, and under Flywire its services will be available for the first time outside the U.S.

Ingenico Group has agreed to acquire Paymark, a leading payments processor in New Zealand, for about US$140 million.

Japanese card network JCB has expanded its acceptance to Belarus for the first time through an agreement with Belinvestbank.

Lighthouse Network has acquired payment gateway Shift4 Corp. and will rebrand its company as Shift4 Payments.

Payments security experts are warning of the risks to some merchants with payment systems that transmit cardholder data from the processor back to the point of sale from the Spectre and Meltdown computer chip flaws.

To date, the vast majority of security investment has focused firmly on keeping the bad guys out. It only ever works to a certain extent. This is because there is much greater impetus for the hackers to devise new methodologies to gain access and the security industry at large is only ever playing catch up, writes James Barham, chief commercial officer at PCI Pal.

Despite the growing legality of marijuana sales, banks have largely written off the industry as being too high-risk. Recent remarks by Attorney General Jeff Sessions would seem to reinforce that position.

With merchant services provider Cayan firmly under its umbrella, Total System Services is prepared to venture deeper into retail acquiring and processing through Cayan's omnichannel Genius platform.

QR codes, NFC and host card emulation are all favored among among merchants and mobile wallet providers, writes André Stoorvogel, director of product marketing at Rambus.

Diebold Nixdorf has developed new technology to streamline and personalize the shopping and checkout experience at stores and restaurants.

The San Francisco startup behind the cryptocurrency XRP claims it can send money around the world faster, cheaper and with greater transparency.

Despite the mad rush among investors to buy up bitcoin, XRP and other prominent cryptocurrencies, these digital coins have largely failed to operate as instruments for payment. MoneyGram's deal with Ripple might change that, or it might be the first nail in the crypto coffin.