Industry News

GLOBAL PAYMENTS, FIS and GTCR have negotiated a deal that calls for Global Payments to purchase 100% of merchant acquirer Worldpay and FIS to acquire 100% of Tsys, a card account processing business owned by Global Payments. Private equity firm GTCR isthe majority owner of Worldpay, and FIS owns all other shares. Global Payments will pay $22.70 billion in cash and stock to assume complete ownership of Worldpay. FIS will pay $13.50 billion to acquire Tsys. The divestitures will occur simultaneously.

U.S. DISTRICT COURT Judge Mark Pittman of the Northern District of Texas has ruled that the Credit Card Accountability and Disclosure Act of 2009 was violated when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau instituted an $8 cap on fees issuers can charge consumers who make late payments. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and five other organizations had petitioned the court to overturn the CFPB’s action. The CFPB, now headed by a Trump administration appointee, was among the organizations that requested the court to overturn its own previous ruling.

Unipaas, a UK-based provider of embedded payments through its SaaS platform, has formed a partnership with Mastercard. The companies want to promote card payment acceptance by small and midsized companies in industries including health services, education, field services and professional training.

FIS’ Premium Payback real-time pay with points service was rolled out to Bilt, allowing Bilt's Mastercard cardholders to redeem their Bilt rewards easily at checkout, allowing them to save money instantly when shopping. The program will roll out in the third quarter of 2025 to all eligible Bilt Members.

Aurora Payments has integrated network tokenization into its Arise payment platform. Tokens are issued directly by the card networks on behalf of issuing banks. Tokenization helps merchants, software providers and ISOs reduce fraud, increase approval rates and lower processing costs. Aurora Payments supports more than 27,000 merchants that generate $12 billion annually in purchase card volume. When fully integrated with Arise, the tokenization service requires no development work, hardware updates or downtime. It can be sues for both card-present and card-not-present transactions. Aurora supports more than 27,000 merchants and processes over $12 billion in annual payments volume.

Everee, which provides software that enables companies to pay both W-2 workers and 1099 contractors as often as daily, has launched the Expedite Visa Pay Card in partnership with Dlivrd, a white-label delivery management service for delivery drivers. The Bancorp Bank is the debit card issuer.

Tietoevry Banking has received a five-year extension of its card processing, fraud prevention and card production services contract with Bank Norwegian. The bank has 1.4 million cardholders. Bank Norwegian is part of the Noba Bank Group, which is active in eight markets.

Wex has received a multi-ye ar extension of its business fuel card partnership with convenience retailer Circle K, which operates 6,800 locations in the US. The new deal includes development of custom software for commercial fleets. Circle K has also become a merchant acceptance location for 10-4 by Wex, a free mobile app used by independent truckers and small trucking companies in the US.

LoanPro, which has 600 financial services industry clients, has integrated its credit platform with NovoPayment. The companies plan on taking their combined service to customers in Latin America. LoanPro’s Transaction Level Credit product lets lenders establish repayment terms, interest rates and fees at the individual account level. NovoPayment is a digital banking and payment processor in Latin America. Last year it processed over 310 million transactions in 15 markets.

Checkbook has integrated PayPal and Venmo with its payment processing platform. Businesses will be able to disburse funds directly to the PayPal and Venmo platforms without having to enter any bank account information for a recipient. Checkbook also disburses funds to bank accounts using the ACH or real time networks, via printed checks or to Visa or Mastercard debit cards.

JCB contactless card acceptance will be promoted in Germany by First Cash Solution, an independent acquirer subsidiary of Volksbank with 22,000 merchant customers.

ACI Worldwide and Ingo Payments have formed a partnership. Ingo’s embedded payments technology will integrate with the ACI Speedpay Digital Disbursements platform. Using either embedded payments or a fully-hosted software-as-a-Service option, their customers will have access to point-in-time, batch-based or real-time disbursements via the ACH, signature-based debit cards, PayPal/Venmo or real-time networks.

PayNearMe operates a network of 62,000 retail locations in the US where consumers can make cash payments over-the-counter for consumer loans, iGaming, property management and other use cases. Core10, provider of middleware that community banks and credit unions use to connect their core banking systems to fintechs, has integrated with PayNearMe to support loan repayments.

Airwallex merchants in Australia, Europe, Hong Kong, Singapore and the US can now accept payments from Discover and Diners Club cards. The company supports more than 150,000 businesses worldwide with services including payments, treasury, spend management and embedded finance.

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, the largest hotel franchising company in the US, has launched the Wyndham Rewards Debit Card. Galileo Financial is handling the account processing. Sunrise Banks is issuing the Mastercard branded card and holds all deposits. The card’s $6 monthly fee is waived with an average monthly account balance of $2,500. Rewards points can be redeemed for free nights at more than 60,000 hotels, vacation clubs and vacation rentals.

TreviPay provides businesses with the ability to embed trade credit in their online sales channel through its order-to-cash technology. HSBC will offer TreviPay to its corporate customers in the UK. In addition to trade credit on B2B transactions, order-to-cash manages invoices and buyer verification.

XCharge North America, provider of proprietary EV charging technology, has rolled out its first Virtual Point of Sale system, which offers payment acceptance from Apple Pay and Google Pay in addition to cards. VPOS uses an on-screen QR code to fight phishing and other types of fraud.

KLARNA, an AI-powered BNPL and shopping assistance provider, has partnered with Blackhawk Network, a branded payments provider, to launch Klarna’s Gift Card Store in the UK. Customers will be able to pay for Blackhawk’s selection of prepaid cards using Klarna’s BNPL products and its instant debit option, Pay Now. They will also be able to include a personalized note and scheduled delivery. Merchants on Blackhawk’s site include Airbnb, Argos, Fortnite, Adidas, Ikea, Playstation, Deliveroo, H&M, Wagamama, Currys and Uber.

PCI Pal will provide secure payment processing support to RingCentral, a provider of cloud business communications. Their integration enables RingCentral customers to access PCI Pal’s PCI DSS cloud-native technology and process payments without exposing any cardholder data.

Marqeta has become the card issuing partner of Spendesk Financial Services (SFS) in Europe.  SFS the payment institution unit of Spendesk, which provides a spend management and procurement platform to small and midsized businesses. The integration with Marqeta gives SFS the opportunity to provide real-time card processing and controls on spending.

Al Etihad Payments, a subsidiary of the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, has signed an agreement with UnionPay to issue co-brand cards. The first cards will operate on Jaywan, the domestic network of the UAE. They will also be accepted for payment on the UnionPay International network. Cards will be issued by multiple financial institutions in the UAE.

Gr4vy will provide its cloud-based, no-code payment orchestration platform to Azupay, a provider of real-time payments processing to e-commerce merchants in Australia. Merchants reach Gr4vy through Azupay’s PayID, PayTo and Pay by Bank services.

Socure, provider of a platform for digital identity verification, fraud prevention and sanctions screening, has launched an Identity Manipulation Risk Score designed to stop repeat first-party fraud abusers from acting at scale. The score is embedded within Socure’s Sigma First-Party Fraud product which provides risk signals, real-time monitoring and intelligence from account opening through the entire customer lifecycle.

i2c offers debit card issuance processing services and digital wallet support to North America-based bank and credit union clients of Finastra, a provider of financial services software under a new partnership. Finastra and i2c connect via an API.

Fourth quarter net sales increased 22% to $125.1 million, net income increased 148% to $6.8 million, and Adjusted EBITDA increased 10% to $21.9 million, compared to the prior year period. Sales growth was led by strong performance from the prepaid business, driven by sales of more complex, higher-value packaging solutions and expansion into new customer verticals, and increased sales of contactless debit and credit cards and personalization services.