Competitive Strategies

Liberal members of the U.S. Supreme Court sharply questioned American Express Co.’s lawyer during oral arguments Monday for a major case involving a challenge to AmEx’s anti-steering rules for its merchants, Reuters reported. A group of 11 states led by Ohio alleges the rules violate antitrust laws and is challenging …

Discover Financial Services cardholders will be able to make point-of-sale contactless purchases with wearables and Internet of Things devices that use FitPay Inc.’s FitPay Payment Platform under an agreement announced Monday by the two companies. The new service will provision payment credentials using the Discover Digital Exchange, Riverwoods, Ill.-based Discover’s …

Point-of-sale equipment maker Ingenico Group said it has begun integrating Google Pay Smart Tap into its POS terminals in the United Kingdom, enabling Google Pay users to transmit their loyalty information, coupons, and offer redemptions in a single tap along with the payment. Ingenico said this is the first step …

As Apple Pay’s global user base climbs to an estimated 127 million individuals, a mystery about why even more consumers don’t use Apple Inc.’s mobile-payment service confounds one researcher. Loup Ventures, a Minneapolis-based venture-capital firm, on Thursday released its annual Apple Pay review. Among its findings is that the estimated …

Some 27% of executives with responsibility for their organization’s mobile devices said their firm had experienced a security incident in the past year involving the loss of data or system downtime in which mobile devices played a key role, according to new findings from Verizon Communications Inc. In addition, 32% …

Some 2.7 million merchant locations, or 59% of U.S. storefronts, were accepting EMV chip cards as of December, according to the latest update from Visa Inc., issued Friday. That’s up from 392,000 locations in September 2015, just before the major card networks began enforcing a mandate for chip card acceptance. …

In the wake of the Florida school shooting, First National Bank of Omaha has said it will not renew an agreement it has with the National Rifle Association to issue a cobranded Visa card. American Express Co. said its cardholders can now use their Membership Rewards points to order items …

Visa Inc. launched Token Management Service, a service it says will make it easier for users to manage tokenized payment card data from multiple sources and across multiple channels, the card network announced Thursday. Designed to complement the Visa Token Service, the new program provides a way for merchants to use …

The number of Apple Pay users globally increased an estimated 104.8% in a year, from 62 million in 2016 to 127 million in 2017, Loup Ventures, a research-driven venture-capital firm, said. Only an estimated 16% of global iPhone users have activated Apple Pay, the firm said, which added that it is …

It doesn’t get a lot of attention in these days of EMV, mobile payments, and digital currency, but carrier billing, one of the oldest forms of digital payments, is poised for growth. Total payment volume globally will triple by 2022, rising from $2.9 billion last year to $9 billion, according …