Competitive Strategies

Maple AI Inc., a provider of artificial intelligence-based phone-ordering systems for restaurants, has partnered with Shift4 Payments Inc. to integrate its AI-based phone system into Shift4’s SkyTab POS technology. The inclusion of Maple’s AI ordering system in the SkyTab platform is expected to significantly reduce the number of phone orders …

Israel-based payments company Nayax Ltd. lined up another partnership to process payments for electric vehicle owners who stop at E-Plug-branded charging stations. Announced Monday, the partnership means Nayax will handle payments at an anticipated 2,200 connections throughout the United States. Earlier in March, Nayax said 40% of its revenue comes …

New York City-based payments and corporate card platform Ramp Business Corp., said it has acquired Juno, a platform that offers travel arrangements for non-employee travel. Terms were not announced. Ramp’s deal for Juno was preceded by its Friday announcement that it has acquired Billhop, a payments provider licensed in the United Kingdom …

Consumers spend more and shop with greater frequency when friction is removed from payments, says a study from the payments provider Network Merchants Inc., also known as NMI. Some 50% of respondents in the study said they shop more frequently when payments feel seamless, and 48% say they spend more at …

Restaurateurs generally will seek any edge to persuade consumers to spend their dining dollars with them. Online-ordering platform Restolabs says it now offers independent restaurants similar services to those used by enterprise-level restaurants, which could potentially increase their online conversion rates. Meanwhile, Finix Payments Inc. released its mobile point-of-sale app …

As of January, some 37% of U.S. consumers had used buy now, pay later financing when making a purchase within the prior 90 days, a 5% increase from a year earlier, according to JD Power’s annual BNPL study. Half of these consumers were under the age of 40. JD Power …

Available beginning March 16, the CardFlight Inc. SwipeSimple App Marketplace will enable merchants to use curated applications to help run their businesses. In related news, fintech Jaris Inc. launched a merchant onboarding service with Aurora Payments as one of the first clients. New York City-based CardFlight says the marketplace for …

Peer-to-peer payments platform Zelle has collaborated with Bank of America to process charitable disbursements from Donor Advised Funds, enabling nonprofits to receive charitable grant funding in near real time. Zelle is a unit of Early Warning Services. Some 26% of bill-pay platforms said their systems are ready for the future, though 80% …

French fintech Mirakl SAS has partnered with J.P. Morgan Payments to provide infrastructure for the payments provider’s agentic-commerce offering. The partnership will enable merchants to facilitate agentic commerce without having to build and manage complex integrations and protocols. Mirakl will integrate J.P. Morgan Payments technology into its Nexus agentic-commerce service, which …

Travelers buying airfare direct from an airline have a new payment option that could ease some of the issues around funding that travel. UATP, a global payment network owned and operated by airlines, is working with Hands In, a specialist in split-payment enablement, to allow airlines to activate Hands In’s …