Competitive Strategies

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 …

High usage rates and increasing adoption by small businesses are the primary factors that have led Interac, Canada’s national debit and account-to-account payment network, to hit a record 1 billion transactions for the 12-month period ended April 30, a 16% increase from the same period a year earlier. A recent …

Payments-as-a-service and other “as-a-service” technologies have emerged in recent years to package the technology and expertise needed for fintechs to expand their reach and expertise in payments. Now acquiring-as-a-service is stepping onto center stage with news that Fiserv Inc. has agreed to support payments for merchants using Trust Payments Ltd. …

Luma Health Inc. debuted LumaPay, which allows patients to pay medical bills via text messages.U.S.-based payments provider FreedomPay said it is working with Network International to provide digital-payment capability to the hospitality industry in the Middle East and Africa region.Canada-based Kapsch TrafficCom announced it has now manufactured 100 million toll-payment transponders, which are used in …

Huntington Bancshares Inc. said it is establishing a unit within the bank dedicated to payments strategy and investment. Amit Dhingra has been appointed to lead the group as Enterprise Payments Director.A platform called i-payout said it is launching a real-time service for payouts in the U.S. and Canada. Rather than …

The drive to achieve mainstream merchant acceptance of cryptocurrency received a boost Thursday as Shopify Inc. and DePay, a Swiss blockchain payments platform, teamed up to enable consumers to send direct payments to Shopify merchants’ wallets.  Shopify will leverage DePay’s blockchain to enable merchants to receive any preferred tokens, with …