Competitive Strategies

Amazon.com Inc. reported net sales of $514 billion for 2022, up 9% over 2021, excluding an impact from changes in foreign-exchange rates. Sales in the North American market grew 13% over 2021, to $315.9 billion. The company recorded an operating loss of $2.8 billion in North America, swinging from a positive …

Merchant satisfaction with payment processors has dwindled in the past year, as sellers cope with the impact of inflation on their processing costs as well as on their business in general, according to J.D. Power’s 2023 U.S. Merchant Services Satisfaction Study. The merchant satisfaction score for merchant-services providers totaled 853, …

Citizens Financial Group Inc. has launched the Zelle peer-to-peer payments service for the bank’s small-business customers. U.S.-based Clickatell said it has deployed its Chat 2 Pay service with a pay-by-link capability for FlySafair, a South African airline for mobile payments via’s FlySafair’s WhatsApp channel. Payments provider Lightspeed Commerce Inc. announced it processed $22.4 billion in volume for …

P97 Networks, a provider of cloud-based mobile-commerce technology to convenience stores, gas stations, and the automotive industry, is teaming with Visa Inc. to deploy Visa’s token technology as a way to reduce friction with in-car payments, as well as create new customer experiences for mobile-wallet users. P97 will use Visa’s …

Point-of-sale technology provider Ingenico is working with buy now, pay later specialist Splitit to offer BNPL at the physical checkout using Ingenico’s payments-platform-as-a-service technology. Block Inc.’s Afterpay buy now, pay later service said it will enable access for users to New York Fashion Week beginning Feb. 11 and running for four days. Afterpay is …

Block Inc.’s Cash App unit says it is attempting to make it easier for consumers to salt away money with the introduction of Cash App Savings. The new feature allows Cash App users to deposit savings into a separate account within the app, build additional savings by rounding up their …

Elon Musk helped found what became PayPal back at the turn of the century, and now it appears he is moving on an ambition he outlined months ago to add a payments feature to Twitter, the social-media platform he paid $44 billion to acquire in October. The San Francisco-based company …

Banking and payments professionals should watch for action from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on key areas such as open banking, credit card late fees, fintech partnerships, and buy now, pay later plans, warns Strategic Resource Management, a consulting firm. American Express Co. released its American Express Business Blueprint, a digital cash flow management service …

The U.S. Department of Justice wants more information from Visa Inc. on its U.S. debit practices, a continuation of an investigation originally started in 2021. Visa disclosed the request in a Jan. 27 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing and said the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division made the request on …

Gr4vy Inc., a payments-technology provider, has integrated network-tokenization services from Giesecke+Devrient GmbH into its platform in a move expected to improve authorization rates and cut transaction costs. Owlin, an artificial-intelligence technology developer, launched Owlin for KYC, said to be one platform to screen merchants and to ease onboarding, monitoring, and …