Competitive Strategies

Merchant processor Square Inc. on Nov. 1 will drop its longstanding 2.75% point-of-sale rate for a new pricing plan of 2.6% plus 10 cents. Based on recent U.S. purchase dollar- and transaction-volume statistics from the bank card networks, Digital Transactions News calculates the new pricing plan will generate about 1% …

The United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority fined PayPal Holdings Inc. £250,000 ($309,700) in connection with PayPal’s $2.2 billion acquisition of Sweden-based processor iZettle AB last year; the regulator said PayPal violated an order not to integrate its U.K. business with iZettle during an investigation by cross-selling services to U.K. consumers. PayPal said it …

Merchant-services companies may already have the best tool for courting independent software vendors and software developers. It’s the sales model. That’s the word from a panel at last week’s Western States Acquirers Association conference in Rancho Mirage, Calif. Many payment providers are looking to integrated payments, often an integral part …

P97 Networks, a mobile-payments and content provider for gas pumps, partnered with WannLynx, which supports in-store and at-the-pump video and other content for fueling stations, to enable payments as well as discounts, coupons, and other loyalty programs for convenience stores and gas stations.Brex, a startup that creates corporate card programs …

The clamor to sign up merchants that want to sell hemp-derived cannabidiol products is undiminished despite multiple questions about what a legal CBD product is and how to onboard these merchants. “The banks are having a tough time now because it’s so new,” said Travis Chrisman, president and cofounder of …

Familiar now as a point-of-sale payment option, transactional credit is moving into the much larger—and more complicated—world of business-to-business payments. Splitit Payments Ltd. announced on Monday it has launched a service that allows merchants and other small businesses to pay suppliers with regular, interest-free installments on an existing business credit …

The Federal Trade Commission announced settlements with the two principals of Apex Capital Group, an Internet marketer of dietary supplements and personal-care products the FTC accused of using deceptive free-trial offers and negative-option billing in the U.S. and United Kingdom. The defendants must surrender assets valued at $3 million or more and are barred …

With three processor megamergers having closed in 2019, the value of firms involved in handling and managing electronic payments has seldom been clearer. But further evidence emerged this week with news of Stripe Inc.’s latest funding round, which valued the San Francisco-based payments-technology company at fully $35 billion. Indeed, at …

With the closing of three megamergers this year, one might think investment opportunities in payments and acquiring could shrink. But that would be an error. That was the assessment of investment professionals speaking Thursday at the Western States Acquirers Association annual conference in Rancho Mirage, Calif.  “It’s a massive industry. …

A survey by processor Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) found that 54 countries now have active real-time payment programs, up from 40 in 2018 and nearly four times as many as 2014.Cross River Bank, which specializes in services for technology companies, has applied to link to The Clearing House Payments Co.’s Real Time …