Marketing

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has released an Android version of its Walmart Scan & Go self-checkout app that consumers use on their smart phones. This version joins the iOS app currently being tested at a single Wal-Mart store in Rogers, Ark., and could indicate consumers are increasingly embracing the self-checkout concept just …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews If loyalty programs are the key to boosting usage of new payments methods like mobile wallets, ease of rewards redemption could be even more critical. On Wednesday, terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc. took a step in that direction by expanding the reach of its Points Redemption …

The 120-year-old automobile is getting a payments makeover. Automaker American Honda Motor Co. Inc. last week demonstrated an in-vehicle payments system for parking and paying for fuel at the 2017 CES, a consumer electronics exhibition in Las Vegas. Honda held the demonstration in conjunction with Visa Inc., Gilbarco Veeder-Root, which …

An offshoot of artificial-intelligence research, chatbots emerged in 2016 as a popular technology for reaching and serving consumers for banking, payments, and shopping. Facebook’s Messenger app, which began supporting the bits of code this spring, was by September already crawling with 30,000 bots holding conversations with consumers to fulfill simple …

Tablet point-of-sale terminal seller Revel Systems on Thursday unveiled its Insights by Revel service and noted a 137% growth rate in terminals for 2016. Insights by Revel enables Revel merchant to monitor business activities as they happen. “Owners and managers can oversee labor remotely, and even detect who worked overtime, …

It may be called artificial intelligence, but the potential this technology opens up for payments and banking is turning out to be very real. Earlier this week, yet another major messaging platform agreed to support chatbots that would let its users transfer funds, check their bank balances, and perform other …

Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) has launched what it calls a network of early-stage financial-services technology startups that it says w The FIS HiPo Network, short for “high potential,” so far includes half a dozen fintech startups: Akouba, an online platform for the processing of small-business loans; Bleu, a …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews Mobile payments now account for 25% of transactions at Starbucks Corp.’s U.S. locations, up from 20% a year ago, but a recent 1% decline in transactions had Starbucks executives fielding questions from analysts Thursday about what caused the slippage. Nothing to worry about, folks, was the message …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews The ride-sharing service Uber is strongly associated with mobile apps, not with plastic. But prepaid card providers such as Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. are finding new opportunities in the so-called sharing economy exemplified by Uber, in which drivers using their own vehicles offer taxi-like services to riders. …

By John Stewart@DTPaymentNews Online merchants are dreading an onslaught of fraud, but what they should really brace for is a much bigger problem: so-called new version, which comes from EMVCo, the standards body controlled by the global card brands, will work in-app as well as within browser-based shopping sessions and …