There were 68 mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the merchant acquiring side of the card payment business in 21 countries last year. This compared to 53 M&A deals in 19 countries in 2016. Last year, there were more seed funding, equity financing, and other types of investment transactions in merchant acquiring than there were acquisitions. Investments will be covered in our next issue. Of the 68 M&A deals in 2018, only 18 were announced with mention of the monetary value of the transaction. The acquisitions with known values amounted to more than $26.56 billion. The total value o...