Competitive Strategies

Veteran payments practitioners will recall that, “in the beginning,” issuers paid interchange to merchants to incent them to accept credit card payments from the incipient Visa and Mastercard networks.  By the inception of electronic draft capture (circa 1980), that acceptance was growing to a critical-mass level nationwide, and by the late …

News late Wednesday that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is inquiring into a newly popular alternative for going public comes as payments firms increasingly turn to the method in lieu of a traditional public offering. Reuters reported late Thursday the SEC is contacting Wall Street financial institutions to ask …

Shift4 Payments Inc. said it will process all payment transactions at Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres. The deal follows Shift4’s expansion into stadiums and other venues through its recent acquisition of VenueNext Inc.Payments provider SignaPay Ltd. announced a partnership with Valor PayTech to provide Valor’s countertop, handheld, and PIN pad equipment …

As criminals continue to target e-commerce transactions, online retailers are tasked with employing advanced methods to thwart them. Paay LLC, an authentication-services provider, and OpenPath Inc., an Irvine, Calif.-based payment-services company, are developing a universal 3-D Secure plugin to help with that. Slated to be available in the second half …

After the pandemic struck a year ago, stores scrambled to install technology to support a wide range of payment options, including tap-and-pay, to reassure skittish consumers. But now a new report indicates those efforts may not have gone as far as many have assumed, particularly in the area of contactless …

Focus POS released its @Table service that enables customers to scan a QR code on the table that pulls up a menu on the device. They then can select and order items and receive confirmation their order is being prepared. They service can keep the tab open until the customer is …

Great American Ball Park, home of Major League Baseball’s Cincinnati Reds, will offer a contactless mobile payment service called Reds Pay this baseball season.  Reds Pay uses a white-label service from Tappit, a United Kingdom-based payments-technology company. April 1 is the opening day for MLB games. Major League Baseball’s San …

The Covid-19 pandemic sent shock waves through nearly every industry—not least the global supply chain. Every piece of the supply chain was impacted, from manufacturing and production to fulfillment. And because supply chains are the backbone of commerce, the implications radiated beyond supply-chain hubs and essential workers to also impact …

Nuvei Corp. said it will integrate Mastercard Send push payments into its payment technology platform. Send enables speedy funds disbursement for use cases like payroll, insurance claims, and refunds.Agilysys Inc., a provider of point-of-sale software for the hospitality industry, rolled out Agilysys Digital Marketing, which allows managers to send personalized messages …

Launched in 1989, Digicash introduced the first cryptocurrency. In the 1990s, it was considered leading-edge payments technology. But physical and digital currencies are payment networks. In payment systems, good technology is neither sufficient nor generally the biggest hurdle. No matter how good the technology, without critical mass they’re worth little.  …