Competitive Strategies

Block Inc. has been ordered to pay a $40-million fine to the state of New York for what the state’s regulator on Thursday called “significant failures in its Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-Money Laundering compliance program, which violated the [New York Department of Financial Services’ money transmitter and virtual currency regulations.”  The …

Fintech Branch launched a payroll debit card tied to a digital bank account instead of a prepaid card, as many payroll cards are set up. Schwarzwald Capital said it has invested an undisclosed amount in Vesta Corp., a transaction-guarantee platform for card-not-present payments. Bitcoin transaction-verification platform Branta said it has worked with Amboss, a provider of …

PayPal Holdings Inc. said will release a second wave of advertisements with actor Will Ferrell to promote its checkout services, PayPal Pay Later, its buy now, pay later service, and a sweepstakes that will cover, for 1,000 winners for 100 days, up to $100 of their transactions made with PayPal. PayPal launched the …

Online Asian grocer Weee! is adding SNAP/EBT acceptance to its site via a partnership with Forage Technology Corp. Inc. while financial services entity Synchrony Financial marks an integration with Adobe Commerce to offer its financial products on merchant Web sites. Fremont, Calif.-based Weee! says its agreement with Forage enables its …

Shopify Inc. said merchants in Canada with what the company calls “early access” can now offer to customers the Shop Pay Installments payments plan, managed by the buy now, pay later platform Affirm Inc. The move expands the plan’s availability beyond the U.S. market. General availability for Shopify merchants is expected this summer …

Buy now, pay later provider Sezzle Inc. announced early Monday that users of its MoneyIQ financial-education program are completing an average of 11 modules and have collectively earned more than 5 million experience-rewards points. MoneyIQ, which Sezzle launched with Zogo in January, is a financial-education tool within the Sezzle mobile …

With a renewed emphasis on retail merchants, Lightspeed Commerce Inc. is launching a tool to help retailers data and inventory forecasting. In related news, point-of-sale terminal maker Ingenico says its SoftPOS software development kit achieved a PCI Security Standards Council certification. Montreal-based Lightspeed announced the its four-part plan to boost …

Forter, a provider of identity-intelligence technology, announced early Monday several enhancements to its Payment Optimization technology aimed at increasing authorization rates and detecting account-takeover attempts. Forter is testing what it calls a predictive-payment routing app that recommends when and how to use payment authentication, as well as the best processor …

Cryptocurrency is coming to restaurants, a market that has already become hotly contested by a range of payments companies. Blaqclouds Inc., a crypto platform based in Los Angeles, announced on Friday DineWithCrypto, aimed squarely at consumers looking to order meals for delivery or pickup. DineWithCrypto has already connected to 190,000 …

Zelle, the peer-to-peer payments service from Early Warning Services LLC, took steps late Thursday to clear up misperceptions concerning its decision to limit the capabilities of the Zelle standalone app. As of April 1, app users can no longer transact or enroll in Zelle. Instead, the app will become more …