Competitive Strategies

Total U.S. retail sales, including auto and fuel, will drop 10.5%, to $4.894 trillion in 2020, a total not seen since 2016, forecasts eMarketer Inc. That’s sharper than the 8.2% slump in 2009, in the midst of that recession more than 10 years ago. E-commerce, however, is the bright spot. …

The economy is slowly thawing from its Covid-19 freeze-up, but many card-accepting merchants are struggling with more chargebacks stemming from canceled trips, non-delivery of goods, or other reasons. And some of them also are dealing with demands from their merchant acquirers for more cash to fund reserve accounts. Payments and …

Fearing Covid-19, consumers are less likely to use any method to make a payment in a store these days, but 20% say they have used a smart phone or smart watch do so in the past week, no change from a year ago, even though fewer say they have used a debit …

Investors appear eager to buy stocks of payment-processing companies as evidenced Thursday by Shift4 Payments Inc. pricing its initial public offering at $23 per share, nearly 10% above the high end of the $19 to $21 range it had expected just days earlier. Shift4’s shares opened late Friday morning on …

More evidence that consumers are finally adopting contactless payments emerged  as Cardknox, a payment gateway, noted a 150% increase in contactless payment use from just from November to April. Announced Thursday, the increase, albeit lacking volume details, indicates consumers’ mindfulness about reducing physical contact with point-of-sale terminals. Cardknox said some of …

The U.S. Faster Payments Council’s network committee released a white paper on faster payments interoperability.MoneyGram International Inc. said it has agreed with Al Rajhi Bank, said to be the largest Islamic bank in the world, and its remittance unit, Tahweel al Rajh, to offer money transfers in Saudi Arabia.IBS Software, which serves …

Varo Money Inc., a 5-year-old mobile-banking and payments startup that’s closing in on a national banking charter, raised $241 million in a Series D round that closed Tuesday. The round, co-led by Gallatin Point Capital and The Rise Fund, will help the San Francisco-based Varo expand its financial-product offerings and …

Huntington Bancshares Inc. has made the Real Time Payments service from The Clearing House Payments Co. available to its consumer and business customers. Huntington has 839 branches and 1,434 ATMs in seven Midwestern states.Processor Fiserv Inc. introduced its FlexLine Advance service that enables holders of credit cards issued by Fiserv client banks and credit unions to …

Expectations that consumers will seek out live entertainment with some mindfulness about actually touching point-of-sale terminals is part of the reason for venue manager Spectra to strike a multiyear deal with parking specialist ParkHub Inc. Announced Wednesday, the deal will see ParkHub provide mobile point-of-sale technology that enables contactless payments. It …

Online trading of cryptocurrencies has become a hot market, and the recent online activity driven by Covid-19 fears has only added fuel to that trend. In response, the big merchant processor Worldpay, along with Forter Inc., a provider of fraud-prevention technology, on Wednesday introduced a service that will cover crypto …