Competitive Strategies

Circle Internet Financial Ltd. said early Friday it has agreed to acquire Cybavo, a Taiwan-based developer of tools for digital-asset custody and blockchain development. The Boston-based company, perhaps best known as the developer of USD Coin, a stablecoin linked to the U.S. dollar, said the acquisition will provide the technical …

Mastercard Inc. said it is working with seven companies to enable its branded payment cards to be used for making non-fungible token purchases. NFTs are digital goods.Sardine, a provider of anti-fraud and compliance technology to fintechs, said it will work with cryptocurrency-technology provider Zero Hash to enable instant settlement on the …

When Apple Inc. on Monday announced Apple Pay Later, its buy now, pay later program, the computing giant added an unexpected twist. The new program will not rely for financing on Goldman Sachs, Apple’s long-time partner for Apple Pay. Rather, Apple is setting up its own unit, to be called …

With consumers increasingly turning to fintechs to round out their financial services and get access to those services on their terms, the need to partner with providers of open banking platforms is growing rapidly. To facilitate such partnerships, open-banking network MX Technologies Inc. late Wednesday announced the formalization of its …

Online spending in May totaled $78.8 billion, more than $1 billion above April, said Adobe Inc. in its Adobe Digital Price Index.E-commerce platform WooCommerce said it has enhanced its card reader to add the ability for merchants to enter an order in the WooCommerce mobile app and automatically synchronize inventory between in-person and …

While companies have been steadily moving towards digitalized payments, checks remain a large portion of the business-to-business payment ecosystem. To help accelerate the trend away from paper checks and toward digital payments, Fiserv Inc. announced a partnership Wednesday with Checkbook Inc., a push-payments processor, to enable its Carat operating system …

EMVCo reported the number of EMV chip cards in circulation globally has grown by 1.1 billion over the past year to a total of 12 billion. Some 68% of all cards issued are now EMV-enabled and 90% of all card-present transactions use EMV chip technology, according to the global standards body.Paysafe …

MagicCube Inc. has chiefly aimed its tap-to-pay technology at small sellers to allow them to take card payments directly on an off-the-shelf mobile device. But on Monday the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company announced a version of its i-Accept platform for enterprise and big-box merchants.  To make i-Accept more attractive to …

Total credit and debit card dollar volume for Bank of America Corp. increased 9% in May year-over-year, with credit card volume up 16% and debit volume up 9%, the Bank of America Institute reported.A research report from Aite-Novarica finds what the report calls “excessively high rates” of identity theft, which the report says …

Apple Inc.’s sneak peek at its iOS16 operating system on Monday included the news that the new version will include Apple’s widely expected entry in the hot buy now, pay later market. Available in the U.S. market, Apple Pay Later will be accepted at all places that take Apple Pay …