Visa gains approval to operate in China

Visa Inc. announced the People’s Bank of China has approved its Application to Prepare, moving the global payment network closer to establishing a domestic bank-card clearing institution in the country. The approval allows Visa to begin processing domestic payments in China under the new framework.

Repay Holdings Corp. will integrate its services with Emburse to offer a unified platform for account-payable technology. The partnership targets businesses in legal services, health care, and financial services. Priority Commerce also expanded its role as an orchestration partner for Rally, the NIL agency for University of Notre Dame student-athletes, using its GameTime platform to manage payments.

Recent research highlights a growing security challenge in the sector: the Cyber Insecurity in Healthcare report from the Ponemon Institute and Proofpoint Inc. shows that U.S. health-care providers faced an average of 51 cyberattacks this year, up from 43 the previous year, showing heightened vulnerability as digital payments expand.

Technology Updates

SpotOn Transact released SpotOn Handheld, a tableside point-of-sale terminal for restaurants. The device offers 30% faster processing, a longer NFC range, and 18-hour battery life. Transaction Network Services Inc. also updated its payment orchestration platform to support more than 100 alternative payment methods.

An emerging risk identified by the same study is the unchecked use of artificial-intelligence agents. Twenty-four percent of respondents named AI agents operating without guardrails as the leading cause of data loss, reflecting concerns that autonomous tools can inadvertently expose sensitive information. The findings derive from the fifth annual survey, which gathered input from 705 IT and IT-security practitioners across U.S. health-care organizations, providing a broad view of current threat environments.