Competitive Strategies

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 …

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, …

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Ever since Ant Financial Services Group let it be known in October that it is working with key payments players like VeriFone Systems Inc. and First Data Corp. to bring its Alipay mobile-payments service to North America, the industry has wondered about the Chinese company’s strategy both in the United …

In an early glimpse of how U.S. businesses are using faster payments, the governing body for the automated clearing house issued survey results last month showing that 90% of respondents at surveyed financial institutions report same-day ACH origination volume at or above what they expected. Despite that higher-than-expected volume, the …

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 …