Acquiring

American Water, said to be the largest regulated water and wastewater utility in the U.S., has adopted VXconnect from software developer VertexOne. VXconnect offers a mobile app by which customers can manage payments. Toast announced it has signed Kung Fu Tea for point-of-sale payments processing and related technology. Kung Fu Tea operates 330 …

Payments processor Talus launched ReadyPoint, an offering that allows merchants to accept payments on mobile phones through softPOS tap-to-pay technology from Ingenico. A new report from Visa Inc., called “The Great Indoors: How the ‘Couch Economy’ Is Redefining Consumer Spending Habits,” found that more than 17% of payment cards are used for streaming …

MoneyGram launched its MoneyGram Card, a Visa-branded card backed by stablecoins and developed in partnership with Rain, a provider of stablecoin services. The card is available now in Colombia, with plans to launch in other markets over coming months. Flex Dental Solutions said its FlexPayments service will offer buy now, pay later …

Block Inc.’s Square point-of-sale unit said early Thursday it will support transactions at just under 100 locations belonging to Whit’s Frozen Custard, a 23-year-old restaurant chain based in Granville, Ohio. The move comes as the chain begins planning expansion to more locations. Whit’s, which operates stores in 11 states located …

Checkout.com launched direct acquiring in the United States under its Merchant Acquirer Limited Purpose Bank charter in Georgia. Mastercard Inc. announced Mastercard Wallet Pay, a set of technologies enabling interoperability and encouraging innovation among wallets for contactless and online payments. Some 4.3 billion persons globally now use digital wallets, a number expected …

SpotOn Transact LLC is enlisting Maple Inc., an artificial-intelligence voice-platform firm for restaurants, as an integrated service in its point-of-sale suite. San Francisco-based SpotOn says Maple’s AI platform will deliver a native POS sync for users so phone orders captured by Maple flow directly through the POS system into the …

Some 72% of U.S. consumers have used an AI assistant for shopping, but just 23% trust AI to manage payments, according to the Visa Trust Index for agentic commerce. The survey took place May 26-28 among a sample of 2,065 consumers, though the sample for the payment transaction question was 1,028 to …

Motorola launched its moto watch ultra, the latest version in its line of moto watches. The device includes Google Wallet and NFC capability for payments, among other features. MassPay, a platform enabling businesses to send money to 180 countries, launched MassPay Collect, which allows businesses to receive funds in stablecoins. Diameter …

U.S. small businesses registered a mixed performance in August, with dollar volume climbing but transactions dropping for the tenth straight month, according to the August Small Business Index released early Thursday by the payments processor Fiserv Inc. It all added up to a Small Business Index reading of 145, flat …