Competitive Strategies

Publicly traded payments companies fared slightly worse than the major market indexes Monday in a continuation of a Wall Street selloff triggered by investor worries about China’s economic situation, overvaluation of securities, and the future of U.S. interest rates. Fifty companies tracked by Digital Transactions News fell 4.03% from Friday’s …

By John Stewart Why won’t Verizon Wireless make nice with Samsung Pay? With the U.S. debut of Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.’s mobile-payments service just a few days away—and a national launch of Samsung Pay due Sept. 28—all the major mobile network operators have signed on to support the service with …

American Express Co. is offering new rewards and benefits for using one of its prepaid cards, but at a cost. The card brand and acquirer on Wednesday added a rewards program to its Serve card under the “Serve Cash Back” moniker. Serve Cash Back users, who pay $5.95 per month …

The increasing penetration of digital payments worldwide is helping drive conversion of point-of-sale terminals, vending machines, and parking meters from standalone devices to connected machines, according to a report released Tuesday by Berg Insight, a Gothenberg, Sweden-based research firm that follows the wireless market. Worldwide, Berg forecasts the number of …

The debut of Samsung Pay in the United States is just a month away, but the ongoing migration of U.S. credit and debit cards to the EMV chip standard may already be eroding the nascent mobile-payment service’s unique advantage. Samsung Pay uses near-field communication (NFC) and, uniquely, a radio-frequency version …

Many news accounts of PayPal Holdings Inc.’s spinoff from parent company eBay Inc. noted that PayPal’s market capitalization was in the $50 billion range, but few provided context on where that placed the company among its publicly traded peers. Turns out, PayPal instantly became the fourth-largest payments player, trailing only …

By John Stewart A new service from Square Inc. that accelerates merchants’ access to their funds in return for a 1% fee is likely to gain popularity among the small sellers that primarily use Square for transaction processing, according to some observers. That may hand Square a key advantage in …

By Kevin Woodward Financial institutions that are facing the U.S. conversion to EMV chip cards but have no global card brands on all or a portion of their debit card portfolios now have an option that helps them meet regulatory requirements. The Debit Network Alliance LLC, which is owned by …

By Kevin Woodward San Francisco-based carrier-billing specialist Boku Inc. has bought mobile-payments provider mobileview Italia, Boku announced Thursday. The deal means Boku will provide carrier billing to more than 87 million mobile-carrier subscribers in Italy. Globally, Boku says its service, which enables consumers to make digital purchases using their wireless …

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. says its Samsung Pay mobile-payment service, which uses near-field communication and a radio-frequency version of magnetic-stripe data, will debut Sept. 28 in the United States. Some consumers with some Samsung smart-phone and tablet models will be able to participate in a test set to begin Aug. …