Competitive Strategies

[Aug. 8] Separate efforts by Par Technology Corp. and SoundHound AI Inc. to boost their wins, especially among restaurant clients, appear to be paying off, if their latest earnings are indicators. ParTech, based in New Hartford, N.Y., is coming off its $132-million acquisition in January of Delaget LLC, a platform …

[Aug. 8] With merchants prevailing in their long-running legal battle to overturn debit rate caps set by the Federal Reserve, the largest debit card issuers could wind up the biggest losers, while Capital One Financial Corp. emerges as the big winner. U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota …

[Aug. 13] Six months after issuing an API code to enable surcharging for online transactions, Chicago-based Yeeld released YeeldPay, its surcharging program for merchants. Yeeld says YeeldPay is a no-code payment page that provides merchants across the United States with a compliant surcharging program that, because it uses the Yeeld Surcharging …

[Jan. 13] J.P. Morgan Payments, the payments arm of banking giant JPMorgan Chase & Co., is blazing its own path with two new payment terminals, both proprietary to the payment service. Announced Monday, the J.P. Morgan Paypad and Pinpad integrate in-store biometric authentication with payment acceptance. The point-of-sale devices are …

MenuSifu Inc., a payments-technology provider specializing in Asian restaurants in the U.S. market, announced it is serving China-based Mixue as the restaurant chain begins to establish itself in the U.S. Mixue has become the world’s largest beverage chain by number of locations, with 47,000 outlets, according to MenuSifu’s announcement. Cryptocurrency …

In an effort to appeal to travelers from abroad, China’s dominant UnionPay payments card network announced early Wednesday a new platform designed to simplify everyday transactions for international visitors. Dubbed Nihao China, the new app offers a range of capabilities, including cross-border and person-to-person payments, according to 23-year-old UnionPay, which …

FICO’s latest scoring models now factor in buy now, pay later repayment data, a milestone many hoped would bring these plans into the mainstream credit system, giving lenders more visibility into consumers’ total debt and payment behavior.  However, despite billions flowing through installment-payment platforms, lenders still can’t see the full credit picture. …

Predictions that gift cards would be a popular choice this holiday shopping season may bear out. At least one gift card provider, Tillo Inc., finds that across Black Friday to Cyber Monday, Nov. 28-Dec.1, its total sales were up 41% over the similar period in 2024. Tillo, based in the …

Fiserv Inc. looked to position itself at the forefront of agentic commerce early Monday with the adoption of protocols from Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc.  Fiserv will deploy Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol across its payments system to authenticate, retrieve, accept, and process agentic transactions. Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol identifies trusted …

The speed and apparent lower cost of stablecoins—coupled with the digital currency’s rising prominence as a payments method—has captured the imagination of payments companies. Now some are leveraging the coins for both internal and merchant funding. Shift4 Payments Inc. said early Monday it has launched a facility for stablecoin settlement …