Competitive Strategies

Consumers and merchants may stand to benefit in many ways from agentic commerce and artificial intelligence, but fraudsters may also see what they consider plusses of the data-centric technology, with Juniper Research forecasting global fraudulent transactions in digital banking and money transfer surpassing 2.2 billion by 2031, influenced by the …

An investor group led by Priority Technology Holdings Inc. chairman and chief executive Thomas Priore will take the processor private in a deal valued at $1.6 billion, or $8.05 per share in cash, Priority announced early Monday. The company’s closing share price on Friday was $5.83. The agreement follows a …

Quill Bank announced it has launched its Acquiring Line of Business unit to serve payment facilitators, ISOs, ISVs, and fintechs, and has named payments veteran Deborah Camm senior vice president and head of acquiring. Alchemy, a technology developer for agentic commerce and onchain transactions, announced an integration with Mastercard Agent Pay …

Bottomline Technologies Inc. early Thursday unveiled Global Pay Connect, a platform aimed at easing real-time payments adoption for banks through APIs. The move comes as the company’s research indicates 40% of chief financial officers at banks name outdated technology as the biggest obstacle to real-time payment adoption. “Financial institutions are …

Square is making a big play for independent sales organizations, a merchant-sales model it shunned 16 years ago in favor of direct acquiring. Square, the point-of-sale and acquiring unit of Block Inc., is one of the sponsors of the Western States Acquirers Association conference this week in Palm Desert, Calif. …

Digital-payments platform Input 1 will work with OneShield, a technology provider for the insurance industry, to allow insurance companies to use Input 1 as an integrated service with OneShield. Guesty, a management platform for short-term rentals, announced it has closed on its acquisition of Smily, a developer of property-management technology. Both systems …

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 …

Convenience-store chain Kwik Fill, with more than 300 locations in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, will use PAR Technology Corp.’s PAR Retail service for payments, loyalty, and a mobile app. In related news, Transaction Network Services Inc., or TNS, says a new partnership with Unattended Card Payments will boost its …