Competitive Strategies

Magnolia Soap & Bath Co. will adopt the Square point-of-sale system for its 50 locations, including a module designed for franchises. Founded in 2016, Magnolia uses the franchise model to expand and has stores in 17 states. It will use Square for Retail, a service that includes branded micro-sites for …

The world’s payments systems are still a long way from adopting digital currencies as a standard medium of exchange, but day by day the path to that future gets clearer. Early Monday, a 6-year-old cryptocurrency network called Mesh said it is widening an existing integration with Base, a crypto app …

U.S.-based Marqeta Inc., a card-issuing platform, said it has begun offering account and money-movement capabilities in 30 more countries in Europe, working with Banking Circle, a global bank. Yardi, a rent-payments platform, said it is working with Zenbase, a company that lets renters split rent payments, to add rent reporting to …

As cryptocurrency for payments continues to emerge, two digital currency companies separately are broadening uses for their products. Bitget Wallet, which bills itself as an “everyday finance” app, is expanding its QR code payments to Argentina, Colombia, and Bolivia. Bitget Wallet says it will be integrated with national payment systems …

Fraud and scam bad actors are adapting again to changes in technology and consumer behavior, but so, too, are organizations charged with preventing their misdeeds. In its “Spring 2026 Biannual Threats Report,” Visa Inc. points to four shifts in the second half of 2025 as fundamentally changing how criminals interact …

Point-of-sale commerce platform Lightspeed Commerce Inc. added approximately 3,200 new locations in its fiscal fourth quarter, as it marks a year into its U.S. retail and Europe hospitality focus. Montreal-based Lightspeed, which embarked on the two-pronged POS-based plan more than a year ago, says the location total was up by …

Buy now, pay later provider Klarna AB said Tekion Corp., developer of software for the automotive retail industry, will make Klarna available to customers using the Tekion Automotive Retail Cloud platform. Flywire, a payments-technology platform, announced an agreement to expand an existing link to Driftwood Hospitality Management to support payments at nearly …

Square, the point-of-sale arm of Block Inc., is adding restaurant chain The Hat to its customer list. In related news, 88% of convenience store operators and fuel retailers surveyed by Vontier Corp. report they have experienced a payment outage at least once in the prior 12 months. The Hat, with …

Point-of-sale credit providers are looking for an edge as competition in the buy now, pay later business grows hotter by the week. Klarna AB early Wednesday said it has launched its Klarna Shopping Search app.  The app uses ChatGPT, an AI platform, to assist shoppers in finding current prices, availability, …

Open-banking specialist Plaid Inc. unveiled Plaid Guaranteed Payments, a bank payment service. Plaid said the service will evaluate each transaction in real time and return an approval decision within milliseconds. If Plaid approves the transaction, it will guarantee the settlement. If the payment fails, it will cover the loss and handle recovery, …