Marketing

Consumer concerns about slow deliveries and worldwide inventory issues means some 45% of holiday-season spending this year will go to gift cards, according to survey results from consumers in 10 countries gathered by Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. That represents a 27% increase in gift card spending from last year’s holidays, Blackhawk says. …

E-commerce merchants can expect another strong holiday-shopping season this year as online transactions are projected to outpace those in the same period last year, according to ACI Worldwide Inc. In the United States, the biggest surge in volume is expected between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, with e-commerce sales projected to …

A survey from bill-payment provider doxo Inc. indicates U.S. households spend $380 billion annually on utility bills, with utility costs across the doxo platform up 4% in October compared to the same month last year.Mobile parking-payments app provider PayByPhone Technologies Inc. launched PayByPhone Business, an app for fleet-parking management.Robert Blair is joining payments platform Fintainium as president. …

Shift4 Payments Inc. denied what it called “media reports” that it is pursuing an acquisition of EVO Payments Inc. Shift4 is “focused on supporting … new growth verticals” instead, the company said.Microsoft Corp. is testing buy now, pay later capability in its Edge browser. In conjunction with Zip Co. Ltd., the BNPL service is at the …

With consumers flocking to e-commerce sites, elements such as photos, logos, and artwork are taking on greater importance in helping to generate clicks and transactions. Recognizing that online retailers posting product pictures sell more than those that don’t, Square Inc. late Wednesday introduced Square Photo Studio, an app that enables …

To help speed and simplify cross-border payments for businesses, Euronet Worldwide, a Leawood, Kansas-based fintech, on Wednesday launched Dandelion, an end-to-end real-time cross-border payment network.  Typically, initiating a cross-border transaction is a slow and manually driven process that involves exchanging emails, phone calls, and invoices between participating parties. Further slowing …

Payments provider North American Bancard LLC launched its Payments Hub Developer Portal, aimed at allowing developers to view specifications for application programming interfaces, see product information, and link directly to NAB sales and engineering personnel.Buy now, pay later specialist Splitit Payments Ltd. said it will offer its service on purchases by users of the …

One of Square Inc.’s priorities these days is to sell its point-of-sale and online technology to merchants larger than the small shops it started with and still largely serves, but that doesn’t mean the San Francisco-based company is neglecting new opportunities with that small-merchant base. One such opening lies in …

EVO Payments Inc. reached an agreement with Oracle that will see EVO able to enable Oracle’s enterprise payment services to EVO’s hospitality and retail merchants. EVO will be able to offer its acquiring services to Oracle customers. EVO also will develop a direct integration to the Oracle Payments Interface, which provides …

One of the most prominent examples of the so-called Internet of Things is the ability to make payments from the dashboard of a car, no mobile device needed. And now a forecast has arrived indicating the number of such transactions worldwide will balloon from 87 million this year to 4.7 …