Competitive Strategies

• A Colorado State University management professor and a Ph.D. student in finance at the University of Utah co-wrote a blog post saying that the “legal incoherence” in federal policy regarding financial services for legal marijuana businesses is hurting an otherwise fast-growing industry that in Colorado alone generated nearly $1 …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews Add Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to the list of merchants that will accept Chase Pay transactions. JPMorgan Chase & Co., backer of the nascent Chase Pay mobile wallet, says the massive retailer will begin accepting the bank’s payment service in more than 5,000 Walmart and Sam’s Club stores, …

• Lengthy negotiations for some large contract renewals caused payments software and processing provider ACI Worldwide Inc. to reduce its 2016 financial guidance; the company posted third-quarter revenues of $217 million, down 9% from a year earlier, and a loss of $9.83 million compared with net income of $14.8 million …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Shopify Inc. reported on Wednesday that it is starting to see positive response from its very recent moves to adopt Messenger for their users. Besides the Apple Pay and Messenger initiatives, Shopify also launched a new app in September that the company says allows merchants to …

• Mobile-commerce technology provider Sionic Mobile launched a mobile-payment and loyalty app called Style Rewards for hair salons. The app was introduced in collaboration with Style Media22, an interactive digital-media agency for salon professionals. • Mobile point-of-sale technology provider CardFlight agreed to offer its SwipeSimple EMV solution to merchant clients of …

Kohl’s Corp. joins the ranks of retailers with their own mobile-wallet services with the launch last month of Kohl’s Pay. Menomonee Falls, Wis.-based Kohl’s said the barcode mobile-payment service exclusively uses the private-label Kohl’s Charge card as the payment mechanism in more than 1,100 Kohl’s stores. To use Kohl’s Pay, …

While the payments business is caught up these days in working out strategies for mobile apps and social media, it turns out these aren’t the cutting-edge technologies they once were. Instead, fields like virtual reality, machine learning, and natural language are winning the spotlight. That’s according to a study that …

Consumers may shop in stores more than they do online, but for most—93%—the research into these purchases is taking place online, finds a survey released Tuesday by Revel Systems, an iPad-based point-of-sale system provider. More consumers, 86%, shopping in person at least twice in the month proceeding the July survey …

• Boosted by its November 2015 acquisition of software developer SunGard, processor Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) reported third-quarter revenues of $2.31 billion, up 46.2% from a year earlier. Revenues grew 3.8% on an organic basis. • Co-Op Financial Services said it will provide its online bill-payment application to …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews The new version of the 3-D Secure online-authentication technology is better for merchants and consumers and thus likely to get more adoption than the old version, according to security experts. EMVCo, the chip card standards body owned by the world’s six leading payment card networks, released 3-D …