Competitive Strategies

The restaurant industry has become a focal point for mobile payments, what with efforts to tie payments to technology like mobile loyalty, order-ahead, and delivery apps to appeal to deal-seeking, time-starved diners. Now comes news that startups offering restaurant technology are consistently attracting financing exceeding half a billion dollars annually—a …

When it comes to contactless electronic payment transactions, the U.S. payments industry seems to be more interested in using smart phones than plastic debit or credit cards. But other countries have gone the opposite route. In the United Kingdom, for example, spending on contactless cards reached a record £3.4 billion …

Processor First Data Corp. and Fleetcor Technologies Inc. are forming a joint venture to consolidate their gift card businesses, First Data announced Monday. The joint venture, whose name was not released, combines First Data’s gift card business, digital gift-card provider Transaction Wireless Inc., and its Gyft unit, with Fleetcor’s Stored …

• Merchant processor Harbortouch Payments LLC said it will integrate cloud-based purchasing and inventory-control software from Sarbari into its point-of-sale offering for the restaurant industry. • Processor and payments-tech developer Dwolla Inc. said it has brought its application programming interface for same-day automated clearing house transactions out of pilot. With this move, …

Mobile order-ahead-and-pay functionality has been adopted lately by restaurants ranging from Starbucks Corp. to Chick-fil-A. But with the announcement on Wednesday by McDonald’s Corp. that it will offer the service on its mobile app, the world’s largest hamburger chain could finally push mobile payments into the consumer mainstream. At an …

• A small group of protesters came to the Ottawa, Ontario, headquarters of e-commerce services provider Shopify Inc. Thursday to deliver a stack of 140,000 signatures from people opposed to Shopify’s business dealings with alt-right news service Breitbart News, which runs its Web store on Shopify’s platform. • Roberts Hawaii, a tour-bus and airport-shuttle …

• McDonald’s Corp. is adding order-ahead and payment features to its mobile app as part of a new global growth strategy; mobile order and pay will be enabled in 20,000 restaurants in the U.S. and other countries by year’s end, the fast-food giant giant said. • Dwolla Inc. has introduced Transfer, …

In the battle over online bill payments, biller sites have been beating bank and third-party sites handily, but now the battle has turned into a rout. Biller sites accounted for fully 73% of online bills paid by consumers last year, up from 62% in 2010, according to a report from …

• Merchant processor Sterling Payment Technologies, a unit of EVO Payments International, has partnered with RPower Point of Sale, a vendor of point-of-sale software for restaurants, to offer an EMV solution for the hospitality industry. • Merchant processor Square Inc. introduced Caviar pickup, a new feature on its Caviar restaurant food-ordering and delivery service that …

In an effort to cement its ties with restaurants, Square Inc. announced Wednesday it is adding a pick-up feature to its Caviar meal-delivery service and has acquired the OrderAhead restaurant pick-up service. Both moves capitalize on the trend time-strapped consumers buying restaurant meals for consumption elsewhere, be it at home or …