Competitive Strategies

  First Data Corp. will update its TransArmor tokenization service in 2015 to make it platform-agnostic, while expanding the number of sales channels it is available through, says a First Data executive. Launched in 2010, TransArmor provides merchants a way to mask sensitive cardholder data by replacing them with a …

  Pala Interactive LLC, an online gambling operator, will use payment-processing services from Optimal Payments Plc, Optimal announced this week. Online gambling revenue in the United States is forecasted to be $2.6 billion by 2017, according to one estimate. Another estimate, from Odobo and H2 Gambling Capital, forecasts $7.7 billion …

Google Inc.’s decision to kill its application programming interface for digital-goods sales may have more to do with the expense and complexity of the market than with any underlying strategy to retreat from the digital-wallet business overall, experts say. Google on Thursday announced it will shut down the 2-year-old API …

  PayPal Inc. will use electronic gift card services from InComm Holdings Inc., a move that will enable PayPal to expand the number of retailers’ gift cards that it sells on the PayPal Digital Gifts store and in the eBay marketplace. PayPal, a unit of San Jose, Calif.-based eBay Inc., …

In short order, competition in the business of funding small merchants has ratcheted up to new highs, with new, online and technology-based entrants flooding the market. One of the most recent, and successful, of these new entrants is Atlanta-based Kabbage Inc., which this year will hit the $500 million mark …

  Financial and marketing services company Mozido Inc. says it will use MasterCard Inc. payment and security products to expand its services. Austin, Texas-based Mozido provides mobile payments, loyalty and offers programs to merchants, and has a white-label mobile app. This move means that Mozido products will include MasterPass, MasterCard’s …

  In the past 12 months, 51% of consumers purchased a physical good using a mobile phone, the highest percentage in five years, potentially signaling a greater propensity for consumer adoption of mobile wallets, according to a new report from Javelin Strategy & Research. That is up from 45% in …

  Tablet-based point-of-sale company Revel Systems says it has secured $90 million in Series C financing, a windfall it will use to keep up with growth for its iPad-based POS systems, the company announced Tuesday. Private equity firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, which has long invested in payments companies, …

Square Inc.’s 6-month-old cash-advance product, Square Capital, has distributed $75 million to some 15,000 small businesses, the San Francisco-based payments company announced via Twitter this week. Further, merchants that have accepted the advances have processed in excess of $1 billion in sales through Square, the company said. It also pointed …

Payment processor JetPay Corp. on Monday reported that it had acquired ACI Merchant Systems LLC, an independent sales organization that works through financial institutions to provide credit and debit card processing to their small and mid-sized business customers. Meanwhile, the big merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc. recently bought Xpient …