Person-to-Person Payments

By Jim Daly In a move that apparently signals its intention to become a more diversified financial-services provider, Square Inc. on Tuesday introduced a person-to-person payments service called Square Cash. The service, which works through email or mobile apps, has no fees for either the sender or recipient and only …

Google Inc. on Tuesday unveiled a new mobile app for its Google Wallet that emphasizes the wallet’s loyalty and person-to-person payments features that in the past had taken a back seat to its point-of-sale payment capability based on near-field communication (NFC) technology. The app is now available to all smart …

Investors may be disappointed with Apple Inc. in the wake of that tech giant’s introduction of two new iPhone models, but they’re plenty happy with digital wire-transfer company Xoom Corp. San Francisco-based Xoom on Tuesday raised $85.6 million in a new stock offering, about $20 million more than it expected …

As more and more financial institutions, processors, and networks climb on the instant-payments bandwagon, Computer Services Inc. has introduced a person-to-person payment service with a twist: It delivers near-real-time payments to recipients’ Visa debit cards. CSI, which calls its new service SPIN, for Social Payments Instant Network, has one client …

  Google Inc. released a trio of announcements on Wednesday concerning its Google Wallet mobile-payments application, but even taken together these did not add up to the major overhaul of the product that Google promised last fall. Google’s news included: a Wallet-based person-to-person payments service that works with Gmail, Google’s …

  With electronic person-to-person payments volumes booming thanks to an ever-growing list of services from transaction processors, banks and companies such as PayPal, the automated clearing house network is trying to position itself as a P2P player. ACH governing body NACHA on Tuesday introduced bankers to a new rule it …

  Proponents of same-day settlement of automated clearing house transactions are now pinning their hopes on an enhanced same-day service from the Federal Reserve that contains many elements in a proposal from ACH governing body NACHA that failed last August despite widespread banker support. The beefed-up Fed service, however, still …

  Fiserv Inc. on Wednesday announced it is adding a capability to its Popmoney person-to-person payment service that will let users send money within seconds to intended recipients. The new feature, called Popmoney Instant Payments, relies on debit-network clearing and comes as more and more processors are harnessing these networks …

  Great news for mobile payments: the Federal Reserve says the percentage of consumers using a smart phone to make a purchase at the point of sale grew nearly threefold last year. Not-so-great news: don’t rely on that figure, because it’s too small to be statistically significant. Those and other …

A spate of cease-and-desist orders by the state of Illinois against unlicensed money transmitters has ensnared eight payments companies, including such prominent ones as Square Inc. and NetSpending Holdings Inc. An agency quietly issued orders against both firms in January that seemingly would prevent them from doing business in the …