Competitive Strategies

Square Inc.’s share price slid 10% Tuesday in the wake of an analyst’s report saying growth for the high-flying merchant processor is becoming tougher. Square’s organic growth probably peaked in 2018’s third quarter and growth in subscriptions and services will slow in 2019’s second quarter as recent acquisitions are absorbed, …

Just 14% of U.S. smart-phone users are using mobile-payments services from smart-phone makers, such as Apple Pay from Apple Inc., according to a survey from Juniper Research, which says “the window of opportunity in the U.S. for mobile-payment providers like Apple Pay and Google Pay is closing fast.” The survey …

When JPMorgan Chase & Co. announced in November it would soon start mass-issuing contactless Visa cards, industry experts expected the move to at last kickstart a trend in the U.S. payments industry toward tap-and-pay EMV plastic. But while most experts thought Chase’s decision might stir smaller banks to follow suit, …

Holders of Discover cards can now add their cards to the Garmin Pay mobile wallet for Garmin International Inc. wearable devices to make contactless payments, Discover Financial Services and Garmin announced Monday. Today’s announcement means that Discover is joining Visa and Mastercard as a payment option for Garmin Pay wallet …

Payment Data Systems Inc. said it processed $3.4 billion in volume in 2018, a 21% increase from 2017’s $2.8 billion. Risk-management firm Featurespace raised $32.3 million from a funding round led by Insight Venture Partners. Payments provider ACI Worldwide said it will process real-time payments for 17 banks in Hungary …

A consortium of academics is betting it has the formula to create a high-performance blockchain network capable of processing payments faster and at greater scale than competing blockchain networks. The network, called Unit-e, is expected to process transactions confirmed by consensus on the blockchain in 15 seconds. If realized, the settlement …

In a rare public bidding war pitting the two leading payment card networks against each other, British business-to-business payment processor Earthport Plc’s board of directors on Friday recommended that its shareholders accept Mastercard Inc.’s all-cash buyout offer, which is 10% higher than Visa Inc.’s offer the board endorsed less than …

Discover Financial Services said its payments services operation, which includes network partners, Diners Club International, and the Pulse electronic-funds transfer network, processed $60.5 billion in total volume in the fourth quarter, a 12% increase year-over-year. Volume on Pulse jumped 11% to $47.1 billion owing to new issuers as well as …

Zelle, the peer-to-peer payments service, had a banner 2018 with $119 billion in payments on 433 million transactions processed via its network of banks. That is a 58.7% increase in payments from 2017’s total of $75 billion and a 75.3% increase in transaction volume from 247 million. The increases were …

Data-communications provider Transaction Network Services acquired R2G Services, a Chicago-based provider of a market-data and managed-hosting platform; terms were not disclosed. Payment processor Repay Holdings LLC, which private-equity firm Corsair Capital acquired in 2016, said it has a definitive merger agreement with Thunder Bridge Acquisition Ltd., a special-purpose acquisition firm …