Near-Field Communication (NFC)

Buy now, pay later provider Afterpay Ltd. said users’ average ticket increased 30% in the fourth quarter compared to the same period in 2019.Affirm Inc. completed its acquisition of PayBright, a buy now, pay later provider in Canada.PayPal Holdings Inc. announced a check cashing feature for select Venmo app users. This enables them to have funds …

WinCo Foods, a grocery chain with 129 stores in the Western United States, has launched a gift card program from Blackhawk Network.Buy now, pay later service Zip announced an offer of 3% cash back on purchases on its service during the Christmas season through Jan. 8. Zip recently launched Tap & Zip, which …

The Hale & Hearty Soups fast-casual chain of 20 locations in Boston and the New York City area has chosen Appetize Technologies Inc. to upgrade its point-of-sale operations. The deployment is expected to conclude next month.With consumers worldwide reluctant to travel by air because of fears of catching Covid-19, some 78% of …

The global contactless payment market is forecasted to reach $4.6 trillion by 2027, up 338% from $1.05 trillion in 2019, said Precedence Research. The market is predicted to have a compound annual growth rate of 20.01% from 2020 to 2027.Concord Acquisition Corp., which has been formed to acquire or otherwise combine with payments and …

With merchant demand for contactless payments rising fast in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, Verizon Communications Inc. announced Thursday its Verizon Business unit will begin offering Fiserv Inc.’s Clover Flex mobile point-of-sale device to its business customers. The deal gives Verizon clients access to Fiserv’s merchant services for online, mobile, …

InComm Payments announced Tuesday that its Visa-branded Vanilla Gift Cards can now be downloaded to Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay mobile wallets, enabling the card to be used for contactless payments. It is the first open-loop Visa gift card to be supported on mobile wallets, InComm says. In …

Wells Fargo Co. said overall levels of optimism among small businesses remain at just more than half where they were late last year, even though its Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index rose 12 points for the second straight quarter in the latest period.As local governments imposed measures to control fresh outbreaks …

Less than a week after announcing its partnership with Cybersource, Houston-based P97 Networks Inc.’s plans to expand its PetroZone platform globally are coming into sharper focus.  P97 intends to leverage Cybersource’s gateway connections to more than 140 acquiring banks globally to expand its reach to petroleum retailers. The company will …

At UL, we have seen both customers and merchants are experiencing an increased need for contactless payment options in brick-and-mortar stores. The current pandemic is a large factor in this, of course, but so also is the convenience and speed that contactless payments bring when compared to the traditional contact …

The Covid-19 pandemic is driving consumers and merchants to opt for contactless options, and now software that can enable an ordinary smart phone to accept cards via near-field communication is moving faster toward the point of sale. Visa Inc. on Wednesday granted a so-called security compliance allowance to MagicCube Inc.’s …