Mobile Wallets

While digital wallets have established a beachhead in the payment ecosystem, consumers still aren’t embracing the apps with gusto. The primary reasons are concerns over security and the lack of value-added features, such as rewards and loyalty programs and spend-management capabilities, says Justin Passalaqua, managing director of North America for …

Synchrony Financial said it will acquire the point-of-sale financing business of Ally Financial Inc. The portfolio includes $2.2 billion in loan receivables and includes relationships with nearly 2,500 merchant locations and more than 450,000 active borrowers in home improvement services and health care. Terms were not disclosed. Alchemy Pay, whose gateway …

Apple Inc. will let developers enable purchases outside of its App Store, marking a change that previously prohibited such action. The move comes in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court this week declining to hear appeals from either Apple or Epic Games in their court saga. Epic sued Apple …

With a variety of checkout strategies confronting merchants, NCR Voyix, which styles itself the “world’s largest self-checkout vendor,” has launched new self-checkout technology that relies on a software-as-a-service foundation that enables stores to offer barcode scanning, contactless payments, and other features. The company’s announcement came on the opening day of …

Despite its formidable reach, the social-media platform X faces a steep climb to achieve its goal of launching a peer-to-peer payments service, according to payments experts. X, formerly known as Twitter, announced in a blog post earlier this week its plans to add P2P payments to its platform this year …

Web services and payments provider GoDaddy Inc. released its Tap to Pay on Android point-of-sale service for merchants, complementing the Tap to Pay on iPhone technology it already offers. Tap to Pay on Android enables merchants to use consumer-grade smart phones as contactless payment-acceptance devices without a need for separate …

Bitcoin has struggled for years to win breakthrough adoption among sellers large and small, even though some major, e-commerce companies like Overstock-com, Newegg.com, and Microsoft Inc. have accepted the digital currency for at least a decade. But Bitcoin’ spotty acceptance may be masking some important advances among smaller and lesser-known …

Hospitality point-of-sale system provider GoTab Inc.’s latest product, billed as Phone Only POS, accepts payments on consumer-grade smart phones. It also makes it easier for consumers to pay at the table, GoTab says. The service enables clients to accept contactless credit or debit cards for payment without the need of …

NetCents Technology Inc., a payment-processing gateway specializing in cryptocurrency, has partnered with the massive acquiring processor Worldpay. The deal is expected to boost adoption of cryptocurrency and stablecoins as mainstream payment options, according to NetCents.   NetCents’ gateway provides corporations, small and medium-sized businesses, startups, and blockchain companies, a crypto …

Online shoppers in the United States spent a record $222.1 billion during the holiday shopping season that ran between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31, a 4.9%increase from the same period a year earlier, according to Adobe Analytics. November was a strong month for online holiday purchases, with consumers spending $123.5 billion …