Competitive Strategies

The newly rebranded Verifone Inc. this week made several product announcements. As the payments industry pays more attention to data security, Verifone this week said it is making its secure payment service Verifone Point available to all of the terminal maker’s direct customers and U.S. merchant acquirers and independent software …

A confident Kenneth I. Chenault appeared before 7,000 payments and financial-services executives on Tuesday to talk about what he touted as American Express Co.’s recent record of success in digital payments. While he runs a 164-year-old company with roots in plastic cards and travelers’ checks, Chenault conceded nothing to his …

  Money-transfer provider MoneyGram International Inc. has launched MGiAlloy, a technology platform to enable greater use of alternative financial services. MGiAlloy, which can be used on kiosks, online, on mobile device or at points-of-sale, enables consumers to transfer money, pay bills, cash checks, reload prepaid cards and other services. Dallas-based MoneyGram …

  CPI Card Group is working with digital issuance and wallet platform provider Sequent Software Inc. on CPIMobile, a service to deliver secure digital credentials to near-field communication (NFC)-compatible smart phones. CPI announced Monday. NFC is a two-way protocol that enables mobile devices to share data in a secure environment. CPIMobile …

With financial institutions lending less to small businesses, new, technology-based companies are moving into merchant lending to fill the void. This is a market typically served by so-called merchant cash-advance firms, companies that lend money in the form of advances against a merchant’s expected credit card volume. In many cases, …

Count Poynt Co. as the newest member of the point-of-sale terminal maker industry. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company hopes to entice merchants, developers, and resellers to its product. Osama Bedier, Poynt chief executive, formerly led Google Inc.’s Google Wallet and before that worked at PayPal Inc. The L-shaped device rests on …

  While Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay mobile wallet has been grabbing the headlines, the telco-controlled Softcard mobile-payments service this week lined up another major fast-food chain. Consumers now can use their Softcard mobile wallets to pay for purchases at U.S. McDonald’s locations. Formerly known as Isis, Softcard is a smart …

By Jim Daly Attempting to do damage control in the wake of an email hack and unfavorable publicity about retailers who want to accept other mobile wallets, the chief executive of the retailer-sponsored Merchant Customer Exchange LLC (MCX) mobile-payments service said Wednesday that MCX is working with general-purpose credit card …

Stressing new services such as tokenization, online checkout, and mobile payments, Visa Inc. chief executive Charles W. Scharf on Wednesday left no doubt where the sprawling card network’s future lies. “The things we are doing are all about having the best products in the market to capture where the growth …

For the past decade, image exchange has been one of the undisputed success stories of electronic payments—so much so, in fact, that nearly all banking and retail executives take it for granted that paper checks will clear as images and funds will likely settle the same or next day. But …