Competitive Strategies

As financial institutions move beyond mag-stripe payment cards, they face a crucial question: should we support mobile wallets, and if we do, should we also issue contactless cards? In the eyes of at least one observer, the answer is an unequivocal “yes” and “yes,” even though the former would seem …

The Federal Reserve announced Thursday that work began this month on a new study to measure fraud and associated costs to the U.S. payments system as well as identify fraud’s causes and contributing factors. After a competitive bidding process, the central bank hired Boston-based The Boston Consulting Group to do …

JetPay Corp. reported a 15% year-over-year increase in fourth-quarter 2017 revenues to $19.9 million. The payment and payroll processor posted a net loss of $3.9 million, including $2.87 million in accretion of convertible preferred stock. Shift4 Payments said more of its payments services are available to users of ResortSuite, a …

Glance Pay, a mobile-payment service that had only been available in Canada, is now available for U.S. consumers and merchants, Glance Technologies Inc. announced Wednesday. Vancouver, British Columbia-based Glance says Glance Pay is accepted at 14 merchant locations, ranging from restaurants and food trucks to salons and service providers, across …

In a mashup of the Internet of things and cryptocurrency, authentication and data-security firm WiseKey International Holding Ltd. announced Thursday that it has developed a payment service for IoT-connected devices and its own WiseCoin. Geneva, Switzerland-based WiseKey said it has tested the system, dubbed IoT CryptoCurrency Smart Payment, on a …

Canadians are now quite comfortable with contactless payments, but they view other new payment forms cautiously, according to new findings from Visa Inc.’s Canadian unit. Some 52% of 1,000 adults polled in February for Toronto-based Visa Canada said they are regular users of contactless cards. Also, 80% of respondents said …

PayPal Holdings Inc.’s Braintree e-commerce processing unit launched Braintree Extend, a service offering that includes support for transaction services, rewards and loyalty, and contextual commerce. Brazil’s central bank this week announced a cap on debit card interchange of 0.80% of the transaction, while averaging no more than 0.50%, according to …

With the EMV conversion mostly behind it, the United States is ripe for another big change at the point of sale—adoption of tap-and-go payments, says Visa Inc. With 96% of its payment volume now chip-based, “the next thing we’re focusing on is contactless,” Stephanie Ericksen, the card network’s vice president …

Best known for serving prepaid card providers, Galileo Processing says it is rapidly expanding into other parts of the electronic-payments industry with new services, including application programming interfaces supporting cryptocurrency transactions. Salt Lake City, Utah-based Galileo declined to disclose actual numbers, but said earlier this week that it posted a …

A strong majority of consumers—60%—would use an intelligent personal assistant or voice-activated speaker to make a purchase or payment, finds the latest iteration of the TSYS U.S. Consumer Payment Study. The response is notable in because it was less than a year ago that another survey found only 19% of …