Competitive Strategies

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews If Amazon.com Inc.’s $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods Market Inc. closes later this year as expected, it could set the stage for a radical redefinition not just of in-store payments, but of the checkout experience itself, observers say. The deal, which Amazon announced late last …

• PNC Bank N.A. said its Visa commercial cardholders can use their cards in Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, a move that PNC said makes it one of the first U.S. banks to enable mobile wallet payments for its commercial cards. • A survey from Vesta Corp. found that 62% of 155 …

• The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has issued a proposal adjusting certain provisions of its massive rule for prepaid accounts and asking for comment on whether the effective date for the rule should be delayed a second time. The proposed adjustments concern requirements for error resolution on unregistered accounts and wider flexibility for credit …

• Cavendish Asset Management, the biggest investor in mobile-banking and payments technology provider Monitise plc, said it will vote against the planned buyout of Monitise by Fiserv Inc. because the U.S. financial-institution processor’s $89 million offer is too low, Reuters reported. • Fair Issac Corp. (FICO) released the FICO Card Compromise Manager, a service …

The allure of subscription payments has captured the fancy of merchants and payments companies alike, but churn—the loss of a paying customer—may not only affect revenue, but hamper innovation, finds “The Art and Science of Reducing Involuntary Subscriber Churn” report released Wednesday by Digital River Inc. The report, which canvassed …

By Peter Lucas@DTPaymentNews If banks are to gain the upper hand in the hotly contested person-to-person payments market, the Zelle network, which launched earlier this week, must make good on its promise of real-time payments while allowing consumers to complete P2P payments in the most intuitive way possible, payments experts …

• Amazon.com Inc. introduced Prime Reload, a service that lets Amazon Prime members earn a 2% reward when they reload their Amazon Gift Card balance with a debit card. The reward is added to the gift card balance. Users must give Amazon their debit card, bank-account, and bank-routing numbers when they …

By Jim Daly and Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews Financial-institution processor Fiserv Inc. reported Tuesday that it plans to buy United Kingdom-based Monitise plc, a faded star of the early mobile-banking and payments era that still has some valuable technology, for £70 million ($89 million) in cash. And HalCash North America, which goes …

• Processors Bora Payment Systems, Bottomline Technologies, CSI globalVCard, MineralTree, and Priority Commercial Payments have become the first companies to receive approval from Visa Inc.’s Visa Ready for Business Solutions program, which helps technology companies integrate with Visa’s business-to-business payments services. • In related news, Visa announced it will be equipping the stadiums …

• The Zelle person-to-person payments network announced its service will go live in the mobile-banking apps of more than 30 financial institutions beginning this week and continuing over the next 12 months. The coverage will include more than 86 million mobile-banking consumers, Zelle said, adding that more than 51 million transactions totaling more …