Competitive Strategies

  Two payment-services companies have separately introduced services designed to make it easier for merchants and consumers to engage in e-commerce and mobile commerce. Payments-and-authentication-services provider Jumio Inc.’s newest service aims to make it easier for consumers to shop using smart phones and tablets. Palo Alto, Calif.-based Jumio says its …

By Rick Oglesby, Double Diamond Payments Research With Apple Pay now confirmed to launch on Monday, we are closer to seeing the impact it will have on mobile-payments acceptance, technologies, and standards. In the meantime, much of the debate concerning Apple Inc.’s payments venture has missed a crucial point. While …

American Express Co. is making it easier for its cardholders to use their points to buy a Big Mac sandwich at McDonald’s restaurants in the United States. The card issuer announced Tuesday that AmEx rewards points now can be used to pay for purchases at select McDonald’s locations with national …

Merchant acquirer TransFirst Inc. has a new owner. Private-equity firm Vista Equity Partners, San Francisco, is buying Hauppauge, N.Y.-based TransFirst for an undisclosed amount, TransFirst announced Monday. This summer, TransFirst, which has more than 200,000 merchants, had planned a partial initial public offering with its current owner, Welsh, Carson, Anderson …

If you are an issuer of Visa or MasterCard, your deadline for participating in the Apple Pay service set to debut later this month has already passed. It was Tuesday, and issuers didn’t have much time to think about it (let alone perform a technical due diligence or negotiate terms). …

A humble Frank Bisignano told top non-bank acquirer executives Thursday that his company, processing giant First Data Corp., wasn’t “always good” at listening to its clients and asked the audience to hold him “personally accountable” for the company’s performance in the coming year. Bisignano, a former JPMorgan Chase & Co. …

The arrival of technology companies and other new players in the payments business has left merchant processors scratching their heads over how to work with these emerging brands. Companies like Apple Inc., which has the potential to change both consumer and merchant behavior, have sent independent sales organizations scrambling to …

Never one to mince words, Bob Carr, chief executive of the big merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc., predicts that demand for Apple Inc.’s new Apple Pay mobile-payment service will force the retailer-controlled Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) to abandon a policy of requiring its members to accept only MCX’s CurrentC …

  San Francisco-based Boku Inc. has bought mopay Inc., bolstering its position among carrier billers, Boku announced Tuesday. Germany-based mopay, with a U.S. office in Palo Alto, Calif., says it processes more than 5 million monthly transactions and works with more than 400 mobile operators. Boku has built connections to …

One implication of the breakup of PayPal Inc. and its parent company eBay Inc., announced by eBay earlier this week and planned for next year, is that eBay will likely be free to add a slew of alternative-payment methods for sellers to accept on its online marketplaces. For years, eBay …