7th Annual Field Guide to Alternative Payments

These days, the payments business is all about mobile innovation. But, as ever, it’s also about adoption. How many of these players will crack that nut?

If anything rules in the payments business, it’s adoption—the ability of a new payment service to win usage by consumers and uptake by merchants. Achieving adoption more or less simultaneously is no easy feat. Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc., not to mention lesser lights in the card business, learned how to do it years ago, and for the past seven years this Guide has documented the arrivals of hopeful alternatives—along with the departures of disappointed offerings.

How many of the 38 alternative-payment services listed below will figure out the adoption puzzle is anybody’s guess. What’s clear is that no service today stands a chance without a mobile component. Indeed, services are increasingly bypassing the desktop and going straight to smart phones and tablets. Next up will be wearables, such as smart watches and fitness bands.

Our Guide this year presents a mix of familiar names—Amazon Payments, PayPal, Google Wallet—and brand-new hopefuls—Apple Pay, Facebook Messenger, Microsoft Payments, Samsung Pay. Indeed, it’s a sign of the pace of innovation in payments that fully 10 of the listings this year are all-new. And it’s a sign of the pace of change that 11 listings from last year are gone—some from acquisition (Paydiant was snatched up by PayPal, for example, and Isis/Softcard by Google) and some from a change in the product (Square Wallet went away but is replaced in our Guide by Square Cash, while Easy Pay was subsumed under the new Apple Pay entry).

Digital Transactions generally defines an alternative-payment system as any network or consumer interface (a mobile app, for example) that displaces the Visa/MasterCard/AmEx/Discover networks (seen as one traditional system for this purpose), enables payments in a way that stands apart from that network (even if it ultimately uses it), and/or stands between that network and the consumer in an important way. We emphasize consumer-facing payment systems, but of course many, if not most, of the systems profiled here market themselves to merchants to maximize acceptance of their products.

Information for the listings comes from news reports over the past year, company Web sites and spokespersons, and financial filings in a few cases. We list pricing for the merchant and consumer when it is publicly available. The “Year Founded” line refers to the year the particular service was founded, not the parent company, except in those cases where the two coincide.

Acculynk/PaySecure

Parent: Acculynk Inc.

Headquarters: Atlanta

Year Founded: 2008

Web site: acculynk.com

Field Notes: Acculynk’s main goal is to bring PIN-based debit payments to e-commerce and mobile payments. The company’s PaySecure technology generates a so-called floating PIN pad that appears on a PC or smart-phone screen. Acculynk’s PayLeap gateway makes the service available to small and mid-sized merchants. PaySecure currently is enabled on 3,000 merchant Web sites. Acculynk also has relationships with 10 electronic funds transfer networks as well as MasterCard Inc., First Data Corp. and other processors to extend its reach. The company’s Payzur white-label service enables customers of banks and credit unions to send person-to-person payments. In March, Acculynk unveiled an update to PaySecure that the company says is compliant with the EMV chip card standard and works with near-field communication (NFC) technology. The service can authenticate both credit and debit cards.

Amazon Payments

Parent: Amazon.com Inc.

Headquarters: Seattle

Year Founded: 2007 (Amazon Flexible Payments Service)

Web site: payments.amazon.com/home

Pricing: 2.9% of the sale plus 30 cents; discounts possible for micropayments and high-volume merchants. Local Register: 2.5% for swiped transactions; 2.75% for key-entered sales

Field Notes: Like Google, Amazon has found that being a Web giant does not guarantee success in mobile payments. Amazon last July launched Amazon Wallet for its Fire smart phone and other Android devices, only to kill it in January. Some observers attributed the wallet’s demise to Amazon’s inexperience in a fast-changing payments niche. Perhaps Amazon might give mobile wallets another try. A spokesperson told Digital Transactions News that “we’ve learned a great deal from the Amazon Wallet beta program and will look for ways to apply these lessons in the future as we continue to innovate on behalf of our customers.” Last summer Amazon launched Local Register, a mobile point-of-sale service whose pricing, Amazon says, beats that of rivals Square and PayPal’s PayPal Here.

Apple Pay

Parent: Apple Inc.

Headquarters: Cupertino, Calif.

Year Founded: 2014

Web site: apple.com/iphone-6/apple-pay/

Pricing: Free to consumers and merchants, credit card issuers pay 0.15% of sale, debit card issuers 0.5 cents

Field Notes: Apple Pay uses near-field communication (NFC), a technology that until Apple Pay came along last October had struggled for acceptance despite significant advantages, for fast contactless payments. It also employs Apple’s Touch ID biometric technology for user authentication, and uses tokenization to identify the iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus that the user is paying with, in addition to protecting transactions. The system also works with the new Apple Watch. With hundreds of millions of iTunes account holders forming a prospective user base and Apple’s powerful marketing machine behind it, Apple Pay has more potential than any wallet yet to take mobile payments from geeky niche to the mainstream. Its participating issuers represent about 90% of U.S. general-purpose cards. Apple Pay’s ultimate success, however, is not guaranteed. Apple Pay doesn’t yet have a loyalty component, and it will be a long time before a majority of U.S. payment terminals can process NFC transactions. In late winter, reports surfaced that lax enrollment procedures could enable fraud-minded consumers to bypass Apple Pay’s security defenses. But there’s no question: Apple Pay is the mobile-payment service to beat.

Apriva POS

Parent: Apriva Inc.

Headquarters: Scottsdale, Ariz.

Year Founded: 1999

Web site: apriva.com

Pricing: Determined by acquirers

Field Notes: With cashless vending machine payments and mobile payments booming, Apriva processed $11 billion through its payment gateway last year, up 16% from $9.5 billion in 2013. In addition to its wireless point-of-sale terminals and other services, Apriva offers AprivaPay Plus, its mobile POS product for smart phones and tablets that debuted in 2013. As of February two major banks were using AprivaPay Plus under their own brands, with 15 others selling it under the private-label brands of Apriva resellers. Apriva also sells the service through 1,000 merchant acquirers and independent sales organizations.

Bitcoin

Parent: None

Year Founded: 2009

Web site: bitcoin.org/en

Pricing: Typically free to consumers, with merchants paying somewhat to considerably less than credit card discount rates, depending on the processor

Field notes: Its price is still notoriously volatile and many regulators continue to regard Bitcoin with suspicion, but the leading virtual currency made notable headway in the past year. A record amount of investment capital, $229 million, flowed into Bitcoin startups in the first quarter, according to Coindesk Research, which follows Bitcoin, bringing the total invested since Bitcoin’s emergence six years ago to $676 million. Two companies, stealth startup 21 Inc. ($116 million) and Coinbase Inc. ($75 million), a provider of both consumer and merchant accounts, accounted for the bulk of the first-quarter cash. Bitcoin, however, seems likely to remain a deeply niche payment product for quite some time. While 88,000 merchants now accept Bitcoin, the tally of new Bitcoin-taking merchants dropped to just 2,000 in the first quarter, according to Coindesk Research, and consumer usage appears lackluster. Bitcoin and other virtual currencies could find themselves subject to new regulations, mostly famously New York State’s planned BitLicense, a regulatory scheme serving as a model for other states.

Cardfree

Parent: Cardfree

Headquarters: San Francisco

Year Founded: 2012

Web site: cardfree.com

Field Notes: Developed by a team of mobile-commerce veterans, Cardfree has ties with Mercury Payment Systems, a pioneer in so-called integrated payments that is now owned by the big merchant acquirer Vantiv Inc. Cardfree’s platform supports mobile gift cards, digital offers and loyalty programs, order-ahead services and social-media integration. Cardfree, which claims it can be used at 20,000 points of sale, so far has focused on large fast-food chains, with customers including Taco Bell, Sonic Drive-In and Checkers/Rally’s. The company, however, says it is expanding into other restaurant categories and grocery and convenience stores. In February, Cardfree said 2 million consumers were using its platform and that it had signed an international retailer, which it didn’t identify.

Chirpify

Parent: Chirpify

Headquarters: Portland, Ore.

Year Founded: 2011

Web site: chirpify.com

Pricing: 2.9% plus 30 cents; $2,500 per action tag per month

Field Notes: A processor for payments via social media sites like Twitter, Chirpify also processes messages on, and payments from, TV, billboards, and other venues. Consumers can use marketers’ action tags to request information or actually pay for items they see in commercials and ads. The 20 or so brands using the service include Adidas, Cheerios, Forever 21, Guess, Lenovo, and TaylorMade.

clearXchange

Parents: Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co., Capital One Financial Corp., U.S. Bancorp

Headquarters: Charlotte, N.C.

Year Founded: 2011

Web site: clearxchange.com

Pricing: At discretion of member banks; currently no consumer fees for sending or receiving payments

Field Notes: The biggest news out of clearXchange over the past year was that it had a new co-owner, Minneapolis-based U.S.Bancorp. Founded by Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo four years ago as a way for the mega-banks’ customers to send electronic payments to each other, clearXchange added Capital One as a fourth owner in 2014. Colorado-based Lakewood Bank launched a clearXchange app last December but is not an owner. ClearXchange claims to represent more than 100 million online-banking users.

Coinbase

Parent: Coinbase Inc.

Headquarters: San Francisco

Year Founded: 2012

Web site: Coinbase.com

Pricing: 1% fee for exchanging dollars into Bitcoin, but no fees for sending and receiving Bitcoins

Field Notes: With more than 2.1 million users of its Bitcoin wallet, Coinbase may be the largest firm to offer that service for the digital currency. Coinbase says these users account for 2.6 million wallets, and approximately 39,000 merchants use Coinbase as their Bitcoin payment processor. In November, Coinbase added a “tip” button to enable users to make micropayments to Web-site owners. The button can be used to make one-click payments. The default amount is 300 bits, or about 10 cents as of mid-April. Senders can choose other amounts, Coinbase says. One Bitcoin is equal to 1 million bits, Coinbase says. In April, Coinbase adopted bits as the default for new customers. Coinbase says startup firms are using its application programming interface code to build Bitcoin applications, with person-to-person tipping, cross-border payments, international microfinance, and reputation platforms as the four most popular. In March, Coinbase began accepting MasterCard credit cards as a backup payment method. Previously, it accepted only Visa credit cards.

CurrentC

Parent: Merchant Customer Exchange LLC (MCX)

Headquarters: Needham, Mass.

Year Founded: 2012

Web site: currentc.com

Field Notes: For years, the venerable Minneapolis brewery known as Grain Belt used the advertising slogan, “Been a Long Time A-Brewing.” The mobile-payments equivalent comes from MCX, which is still testing its service more than three years after Wal-Mart, Target, and other big retailers formed MCX to operate a network that would free them from paying the high costs of using the established payment card networks. Only last year did MCX’s service get a brand name—CurrentC. Employees of some of MCX’s 80 retailer members are testing CurrentC in several cities, with limited rollout expected to begin this year. CurrentC, which uses Paydiant technology, is expected to use quick response (QR) codes and four-digit PINs for authentication, and draw funds from consumers’ enrolled checking accounts, gift cards, store debit and credit cards, and even general-purpose payment cards. MCX found itself ensnarled in a controversy last fall when Rite Aid and CVS turned off near-field communication (NFC) service in their point-of-sale terminals so that they couldn’t accept rival mobile-payment services, especially Apple Pay, in violation of MCX’s exclusivity policy, from which MCX has since backed away. The company also sustained an embarrassing breach of its email system. But MCX promises that once it’s finally out, CurrentC will be a widely accepted service that will support merchants’ loyalty programs and be easy for consumers to use.

Dwolla

Parent: Dwolla Inc.

Headquarters: Des Moines, Iowa

Year Founded: 2008

Web site: dwolla.com

Pricing: Free for transactions of $10 or less; transactions more than $10 cost 25 cents, charged to the receiver

Field Notes: Dwolla early last month took a big step toward its goal of enabling real-time payments when it switched on its FiSync connection at BBVA Compass Bank. FiSync allows BBVA customers to make tokenized payments that clear in seconds, and more bank-FiSync links are on the way, Dwolla says. Currently, the other FiSync user is Veridian Credit Union, whose investment arm, Veridian Group Inc., is an investor in Dwolla. In December, Dwolla introduced Direct, which lets persons who don’t have Dwolla accounts receive payments from Dwolla users. These payments use the automated clearing house network and clear in one to three days.

Facebook Messenger Payments

Parent: Facebook Inc.

Headquarters: Menlo Park, Calif.

Year Founded: 2015

Web site: facebook.com

Pricing: Free

Field Notes: Actually, this new peer-to-peer payments service, which Facebook announced in March and is rolling out now, doesn’t have a formal name. But Facebook logically enough made it part of its Messenger app, so we’re calling it Facebook Messenger Payments until the company comes up with its own name. Like its rival Square Cash, the service requires both sender and receiver to have a debit card. Some time during a Messenger conversation, the sender taps a dollar-sign icon and enters an amount, then hits Pay. The receiver gets the money in the bank account linked to his debit card in two or three days. P2P payments are hot and getting hotter, and the implications of Facebook’s entry are huge. The company claims 1.4 billion users worldwide, including 157 million in the U.S. and Canada who use the network every day. Plus, on a massive social network, money exchanges become part of the conversation. At least that’s what Messenger and its head guy, former PayPal Inc. president David Marcus, are hoping for.

Final

Parent: Final Inc.

Headquarters: Boulder, Colo.

Year Founded: 2015

Web site: GetFinal.com

Field Notes: The backers of Final, a new credit card with online-management tools that can set spending caps and produce virtual card numbers tied to specific merchants, hope to alleviate some of the dread consumers have about the aftereffects of data breaches. Final is not creating a payment method outside of existing networks, and it will operate on either the Visa or MasterCard network, Ben Apel, co-founder, says. “We are not attempting to build our own infrastructure,” Apel says. Because of that, Final will not need to get explicit merchant adoption or require point-of-sale hardware upgrades, he says. As for the issuing side, Apel says Final is talking to prospective issuers, but he declines to say more. Final also is developing its risk model, and has not made a decision about who might be eligible for its cards. To date, Final has more than 44,000 requests for the test, but only a limited number will participate, Apel says.

Google Wallet

Parent: Google Inc.

Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.

Year Founded: 2011

Web site: google.com/wallet

Pricing: No fee for merchants apart from their usual card-acceptance costs; no fees for consumers to send or receive money; 2.9% of transaction, with 30-cent minimum, to add funds to Google Wallet from a debit card

Field Notes: After a string of frustrations, Google in 2013 seemed to have set Google Wallet on a slow but straighter path to success, particularly with the addition of host-card emulation (HCE), a form of near-field communication (NFC) that bypasses a mobile phone’s secure element and the attendant telco fees for assessing it. But in February, Google went for The Big Fix: It bought the assets of Softcard Inc., a rival mobile-payments service owned by AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, for an undisclosed price. The acquisition turned the nation’s two biggest carriers, Verizon and AT&T, from enemies into, if not friends, at least acquaintances who no longer will get in Google’s way. Those companies had refused Google Wallet access to the secure elements on their phones. Now they will load Google Wallet into all of their phones running the KitKat and brand-new Lollipop versions of Google’s Android operating system. Experts say that while HCE is acceptable, direct access to the secure element is more secure than cloud-based technology. Softcard also had a number of important patents. And with Android commanding 53% of the U.S. smart-phone market, Google Wallet is now a formidable competitor of Apple Pay and every other NFC-based payment service out there.

LevelUp

Parent: SCVNGR Inc.

Headquarters: Cambridge, Mass.

Year Founded: 2011

Web site: thelevelup.com

Pricing: 1.95% on payments, 25% of the incentive offered, paid at redemption

Field Notes: LevelUp depends on quick-response (QR) codes, which consumers receive when they sign up and link a credit or debit card to the free app, which works with Android, iPhone, and Windows Phone devices. To perform transactions, they scan their unique QR code at accepting merchants. A white-label version of the app is also available to interested merchants and developers. The 4-year-old company claims more than 2.5 million users and more than 14,000 acceptance locations. With Apple Inc.’s September announcement of Apple Pay, LevelUp announced its next generation of scanners would support near-field communication and Bluetooth Low Energy, and that accepting merchants could integrate their apps with Apple’s Passbook. LevelUp has also pursued a strategy of integrating with online-ordering and tablet-based point-of-sale platforms. NCR Corp.’s Silver mPOS system is one of those to adopt the payment method.

LoopedIn

Parent: PXT Payments

Headquarters: Andover, Mass.

Year Founded: 2012

Web site: AreYouLoopedIn.com

Pricing: Not disclosed for merchants. No fees for consumers

Field Notes: LoopedIn is a payment system that connects consumers with their friends and merchant locations. The LoopedIn app, available for iOS and Android smart phones, uses a PIN-based system to authorize payments to merchants. Consumers create a profile in the app and load funds from either a bank account or credit or debit card. Payments are made with the funds loaded in the LoopedIn account. To make a payment, the LoopedIn user taps pay in the app and enters a PIN. The consumer then either presents an app-generated quick-response (QR) code or his phone number to the merchant. A listing on the company’s Web site shows scores of merchants, all in the Boston area.

Microsoft Payments Inc.

Parent: Microsoft Corp.

Headquarters: Redmond, Wash.

Year Founded: 2011

Web site: Microsoft.com

Pricing: To be determined

Field Notes: The Redmond computing giant is the latest—and most mysterious—of the tech giants to show intentions to enter mobile payments. It had made no announcement as of mid-April, let alone launched a product, but news leaked early this spring that the company was scooping up money-transmitter licenses in all the states using a company it had previously created: Microsoft Payments Inc. Whatever shape the eventual service takes, it’s expected to launch with the introduction later this year of the Windows 10 operating system. One big handicap: Microsoft’s mobile OS accounts for a measly 3.6% of handset subscribers, compared to 53.2% for Android and 41.3% for Apple’s iOS

Mobile Checkbook

Parent: VerifyValid LLC/Deluxe Corp.

Headquarters: Grand Rapids, Mich.

Year Founded: 2010

Web site: verifyvalid.com/mobile

Pricing: 50 cents per check

Field Notes: With the Mobile Checkbook app, launched in 2014, a user can create a check image and email a link to it to the payee, who can retrieve it and print it out. Recipients can deposit the printout or turn it back into an image using their bank’s remote-capture app. They can also leave the image as is and request that VerifyValid deposit the item for them. With image exchange, payments can often be cleared the same day. Another advantage is that checks, unlike other payment methods, are almost universally accepted. Parent company VerifyValid was acquired in February by Deluxe Corp., which is replacing the VerifyValid brand name with its own, better-recognized name.

Mobile Photo Payments/Mobile Photo Bill Pay

Parent: Mitek Systems Inc.

Headquarters: San Diego

Year Founded: 2012

Web site: miteksystems.com

Pricing: Financial institutions pay fees to Mitek and set retail pricing

Field Notes: Mobile Photo Payments and Mobile Photo Bill Pay leverage Mitek’s imaging technology whose first consumer use was for remote deposit capture. Mobile Photo Payments enables consumers to take a picture of a bill with a smart phone, followed by a picture of the check or credit or debit card with which they will pay the bill, without creating an account or log-in credentials. The software captures account numbers and other relevant data. The older Mobile Photo Bill Pay works through financial institutions’ online-banking sites. In April, Mitek announced a deal with app developer DoubleNet Pay Inc. under which consumers, through a payroll-service provider, can schedule electronic bill payments timed with when they receive their paychecks.

Mocapay

Parent: Mocapay Inc.

Headquarters: Denver

Year Founded: 2006

Web site: mocapay.com

Field Notes: One of the earliest entrants in mobile payments, Mocapay creates mobile (iPhone and Android) and Web-based apps that merchants can brand themselves and offer their customers. The Mocapay wallet works with all major card brands as well as loyalty and gift cards, and is compatible with barcode scanning as well as near-field communication. Barcodes represent one-time tokens of users’ card credentials, which are stored in a cloud configuration. The company claims “several hundred” accepting locations but is getting much wider exposure through a distribution deal it signed in November with Merchant Link, a gateway owned by processing giant Chase Paymentech. Merchant Link will give Mocapay access to 300,000 restaurant, hotel, and retail locations. In March, Doug Dwyre, chief executive since 2011, left for PwC and was replaced by Gordon Boyes, formerly with Mocapay investor Lacuna Gap Capital.

Mozido

Parent: Mozido Inc.

Headquarters: Austin, Texas

Year Founded: 2005

Web site: mozido.com

Field Notes: Emphasizing prepaid solutions for the underbanked, Mozido operates as a sort of “hub” for a wide variety of mobile financial services. Its basic services include remittances (domestic and international), bill pay, and mobile airtime top-up, with payments tied to payment or prepaid cards or bank account credentials stored in the user’s wallet. An agreement with MoneyGram facilitates remittances. Additional services include in-store delivery of location-based promotions and mobile POS for merchants. Mobile payments work with barcode and NFC terminals. In December, Mozido deepened its roots in mobile payments with its acquisition of a majority interest in CorFire, a developer of mobile-payment apps, including a highly popular one for Dunkin’ Brands. The deal also delivered links to mobile network operators through CorFire’s trusted-service manager business. And in February, Mozido took a $2.5 million stake in Austin neighbor SimplyTapp, developer of host card emulation software for mobile payments using NFC.

Openbucks

Parent: Openbucks Corp.

Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.

Year Founded: 2011

Web site: Openbucks.com

Pricing: Free for consumers

Field Notes: Openbucks operates a gift card payment network that enables consumers to use physical gift cards to buy digital content at what the company says are hundreds of online-gaming and other Web sites. Target customers are teenagers and other consumers who don’t have credit cards or have them but don’t want to use them online. Online merchants pay a flat percentage of the transaction to Openbucks. Consumers can buy gift cards from Subway, CVS/pharmacy, and Circle K convenience stores to use them on e-commerce and gaming sites of participating merchants, such as Seafight.com and World Golf Tour. To use the gift cards online, consumers select the Openbucks payment option on a site and enter the card number and PIN printed on the card. Consumers pay no fees to use the card. Merchants pay an undisclosed fee to accept Openbucks.

PayByPhone

Parent: PayPoint PLC

Headquarters: New York City

Year Founded: 2001

Web site: paybyphone.com

Field Notes: PayByPhone processes parking payments in 40 cities in the United States and at 16 U.S. universities and colleges. In one of its longer-term projects, PayByPhone is operating an NFC system for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency in which it has affixed contactless stickers to some 31,000 city meters. The system went into operation nearly three years ago and was, at the time it started, the largest NFC installation in the world, company executives say. Drivers register with the system by entering information about themselves, the card they are using, and their vehicle’s license-plate number. Once registered, they can pay for parking by calling up the wallet, entering the location number assigned to the meter, and the amount of time they want and clicking a “Pay” button. Users receive reminder texts as the expiration of time approaches, allowing them to top up time on the meter remotely. Users can store cards from any of the major brands in the wallet. The company is also investigating how to serve up offers for businesses near clients’ parking lots.

Paycloud

Parent: SparkBase Inc.

Headquarters: Cleveland

Year Founded: 2009

Web site: Paycloud.com

Pricing: Merchants pay a one-time fee of $299 and a $60 monthly fee. Consumers pay no fee

Field Notes: Paycloud is a software-based loyalty system that enables small businesses to offer rewards and gift card programs to their customers who carry iPhones or Android smart phones. Consumers can enroll in a loyalty program on the Paycloud network through a merchant’s plastic loyalty card or the Paycloud mobile app. Consumers can use the app to make a mobile payment, but they must load value onto their Paycloud card or app, a SparkBase spokeswoman says, if they are not using already accumulated funds. The funding sources depend on what the particular merchant accepts. Consumers redeem points or rewards by tapping their mobile device when it displays a Paycloud-generated barcode at the merchant’s Paycloud sensor or tablet computer. In addition to using the app to manage a Paycloud account, consumers also can use a Web site. There, they can add loyalty cards and connect them to the Passbook feature on iOS devices. Passbook enables consumers to view their loyalty cards from the lock screen without having to open the loyalty app itself.

PayPal

Parent: eBay Inc.

Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.

Year Founded: 1998

Web site: PayPal.com

Pricing: For payment acceptance within the U.S., top rate, for up to $3,000 in monthly sales, 2.9% plus 30 cents; for PayPal Here, 2.7% for card swipes and 3.5% plus 15 cents for manually entered transactions; for person-to-person payments in the U.S., 2.9% plus 30 cents when funded with a credit or debit card

Field Notes: Having rebuffed a determined effort last year by activist investor Carl Icahn to have eBay spin off PayPal, eBay later changed its mind and set in motion a separation plan that will set up PayPal as an independent, publicly held company some time in the second half of the year. It remains to be seen how that move will affect PayPal operations. Its 3-year-old effort to penetrate the physical point of sale has sputtered, hampered in part by the refusal of a major processor, First Data Corp., to handle PayPal transactions for its merchants. But PayPal’s mobile business, driven by its Braintree and Venmo units, has gone gangbusters, with 2014 volume totaling $46 billion and distinguishing PayPal as far and away the most successful non-bank processor of mobile payments in terms of actual activity. Volume from mobile devices is now fully one-fifth of volume overall. Now, PayPal is doubling down on mobile, shelling out a reported $280 million in March to buy white-label app developer Paydiant, which numbers sandwich chain Subway and big-box-merchant mobile project CurrentC among its clients. And last month came news that PayPal will add NFC capability when it launches a new version of its mobile wallet later this year. The move comes after years in which the company tried to make do without the contactless technology that Apple Inc. and other major players have embraced for mobile payments.

People Pay

Parent: Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS)

Headquarters: Jacksonville, Fla.

Year Founded: 2013

Web site: FISGlobal.com

Field Notes: People Pay—the name FIS has given its person-to-person service—is built on the PayNet network the company introduced in 2013 to offer real-time settlement for various non-card payments. Using PayNet, People Pay can process transactions through NYCE, the Secaucus, N.J.-based electronic funds transfer switch owned by FIS that links financial institutions, including those that aren’t otherwise FIS clients. It can also rely on core-banking connections in cases where the banks involved are FIS clients. Users send payments through their bank’s online-banking system using the recipient’s email address or mobile-phone number. The recipient receives a text or email with instructions on how to retrieve the money. Financial institutions can set payment limits.

Popmoney

Parent: Fiserv Inc.

Headquarters: Brookfield, Wis.

Year Founded: 2009

Web site: Popmoney.com

Pricing: Set by financial institutions. Senders on popmoney.com pay 95 cents per transaction. No fee to recipients

Field Notes: Processor Fiserv launched Popmoney, a person-to-person payment service, in 2010 and in 2013 added an instant payment feature, which gives recipients access to their money in less than a minute. Popmoney Instant Payment relies on debit-network clearing. The faster money movement is possible because of Fiserv’s ownership of the Accel debit network and an agreement forged with First Data Corp.’s Star network to handle Instant Payments transactions. Currently, more than 2,400 financial institutions offer Popmoney. In 2014, Fiserv signed 305 clients to the service. Fiserv added Popmoney for Disbursements last fall, a service enabling businesses to send electronic payments to consumers, replacing checks. Popmoney for Small Business enables merchants to make their invoicing and payment transactions directly from their primary business accounts.

PowaTag

Parent: Powa Technologies Ltd.

Headquarters: London

Year Founded: 2010

Web site: Powa.com

Field Notes: PowaTag is a mobile-commerce app that hopes to make it easier for consumers to buy with their smart phones. To make purchases in stores, after downloading the app and creating an account, the user points the phone’s camera at an object, locates a Powa bar code, and scans it. Consumers also can scan codes included in printed advertisements and elsewhere, in addition to snapping a photo of an item in a television commercial. The app uses the phone’s microphone and camera to determine if the item is part of a retailer’s Powa campaign. The watermarked item then appears on the next screen where the consumer selects size and color and confirms the shipping address and payment method. A tap of the “Pay Now” button sends the payment information from Powa to the merchant. 2(X)IST, a men’s underwear brand, a unit of H. Best Ltd., is the first U.S. brand to use PowaTag to enable purchases from tags placed inside New York City taxis and on billboards and bus shelters.

Qwick Codes

Parent: MagTek Inc.

Headquarters: Seal Beach, Calif.

Year Founded: 2012

Web site: QwickCodes.com

Pricing: $49.99 annual subscription

Field Notes: The Qwick Codes app generates a single-use token that enables consumers to make in-store purchases by scanning a 2D Qwick Codes barcode on their phone at the point of sale or online by entering their eight-digit Qwick Codes at checkout. Users can also make ATM withdrawals by selecting the Qwick Codes option, then entering their Qwick Codes number and PIN, which eliminates the threat of ATM skimming. Consumers also can use QwickCodes to make online purchases at participating merchant sites. To do so, consumers select MagTek’s QwickPay payment option and enter the eight-digit PIN. This can reduce the number of keystrokes a consumer has to enter. To add a card to the Qwick Codes wallet, consumers must swipe the card using an available card reader from MagTek. This is required to reduce the possibility of card skimming, MagTek says.

Ripple

Parent: Ripple Labs Inc.

Headquarters: San Francisco

Year Founded: 2012

Web site: RippleLabs.com

Field Notes: Ripple Labs is the developer of XRP, a cryptocurrency native to Ripple’s network. An open-source protocol, XRP enables free and instant payments to merchants, consumers, and software developers with no chargebacks and in any currency. XRP enables different currency types to be exchanged outside of traditional bank-settlement technology. Banks, money transmitters, and clearing houses can use Ripple as a settlement technology and alternative to correspondent banking to facilitate straight-through processing with no reserve funding required. For example, a consumer with a branded card can only use that card at merchants that accept it. But participants on the Ripple network can hold balances in one currency and send payments in another. Ripple says the system enables payments that are less expensive than conventional payments because Ripple is not owned by anyone, and the payments made on it are settled within seconds. In effect, Ripple is a shared public database that tracks accounts and balances. As with Bitcoin and the public blockchain, anyone can view the ledger and see a record of all activity on the Ripple network. But unlike Bitcoin, XRP does not rely on mining to create coins. Instead, XRP uses a distribution method that requires each participant to have an account.

Samsung Pay

Parent: Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.

Headquarters: Seoul, South Korea

Year Founded: 2015

Web site: Samsung.com

Field Notes: Samsung jumped into the mobile payments fray with its announcement this spring of Samsung Pay, available on the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge smart phones expected to ship this summer. In addition to including near-field communications (NFC) contactless capability, the smart phones also will include magnetic-stripe radio-field technology from LoopPay Inc., which Samsung acquired earlier this year. Few details about the yet-to-be-launched service are available, but the expectation is that by including LoopPay’s technology, the number of merchants where a consumer can make a Samsung Pay mobile payment will be greater than the 700,000 locations that currently accept Apple Pay’s NFC-based payments. Using the LoopPay mobile wallet, a registered user presses a button on a LoopPay fob or within the app on a smart phone held in a LoopPay case to initiate a transaction. She selects the payment card and presses the Tap to Pay button. Data is wirelessly transmitted to the point-of-sale reader using a magnetic field that most POS terminals can read. The signal emulates the same magnetic field change as when a mag-stripe card is passed through a reader. Samsung is calling this “Magnetic Secure Transmission.”

SelfPay

Parent: Digital Retail Apps

Headquarters: Toronto

Year Founded: 2013

Web site: DigitalRetailApps.com

Field Notes: SelfPay enables consumers to pay for merchandise while standing in a store aisle and leave without stopping at a cash register. SelfPay supports cards carrying the MasterCard, Visa, Discover, and American Express brands. Consumers also can use their PayPal Inc. accounts. The app presents only the merchant’s accepted payment methods once the consumer has been located in the store. After recognizing the consumer, the app displays a custom retailer-branded screen, which unlocks the capability to make a purchase. The user scans either the Universal Product Code or a bar code generated by the retailer’s point-of-sale system for items they are interested in and SelfPay displays an in-store price and product description, also pulled from the retailer’s POS system. The shopper then adds the item to her cart, selects a payment method, and enters a SelfPay PIN. The transaction is routed to the merchant’s payment processor. For security, SelfPay transactions are routed through processor Beanstream, a subsidiary of Digital River Inc., before sending the payment information to the merchant’s processor.

Square Cash

Parent: Square Inc.

Headquarters: San Francisco

Year Founded: 2013

Web site: Square.com

Pricing: Free for consumers; 1.5% for businesses using the Cash Pro version

Field Notes: Having shut down both Square Wallet and its successor product, Square Order, Square now finds itself with just one consumer-facing service: the Square Cash peer-to-peer email payments app. Curiously, nobody has figured out how to make money on P2P payments yet. Square isn’t likely to profit any time soon on Square Cash, since it’s giving the service away for free to users while absorbing interchange costs on each transaction. As with Facebook’s new Messenger P2P service, both Square Cash users—sender and recipient—must have a debit card account. Square processes transactions as if it were a merchant handling debit card payments in its store, so senders’ bank accounts are debited and receivers’ accounts are credited via a reversal. Still, the service lets Square pile up useful data, including users’ email addresses and debit card numbers. And, in March, Square introduced some revenue potential with its Cash Pro version for businesses, which pay 1.5% on each transaction. To jazz things up a bit, Square at the same time introduced $Cashtags, which allow recipients to get paid without an email address by supplying a unique identifier consisting of a dollar sign followed by a moniker of the user’s choice.

Stratos

Parent: Stratos Inc.

Headquarters: Ann Arbor, Mich.

Year Founded: 2015

Web site: StratosCard.com

Pricing: Consumers pay $95 annually, which includes updates

Field Notes: The Stratos Bluetooth Connected Card enables consumers to load multiple cards onto an electronic device. To use it, consumers swipe their credit, debit, loyalty, or prepaid cards through a card reader attached to a smart phone. Users verify the information via an iOS or Android app. The smart phone and the Stratos card connect via Bluetooth to sync the card data to the Stratos card. Users can select three favorites, which are linked to three buttons on the face of the Stratos card. To pay, the consumer taps one of the buttons on the card. A pop-up notification appears on the user’s smart phone indicating the selection. The card then loads the pertinent payment data onto the rewriteable magnetic stripe so the consumer can swipe the Stratos card through a point-of-sale terminal.

WingCash

Parent: WingCash LLC

Headquarters: Highland, Utah

Year Founded: 2009

Web site: wingcash.com

Pricing: Merchants pay no transaction fees, but pay fees for upgrading to Brand Cash

Field Notes: WingCash lets users send money via email or social-network connections and the automated clearing house to each other and to participating businesses. The money is represented in a WingCash wallet by so-called WingCash Pages, created by the user’s bank and standing for a sum of cash—anywhere from a penny up to $100—held by the user at the bank. About 12,000 consumer wallets have been issued. Merchants can also use WingCash to create so-called Brand Cash, promotional money spendable at the merchants’ stores. About 500 organizations and merchant locations accept WingCash, most of them in Utah. The service works on desktops or mobile devices, but for now it must be accessed via the Web, as there is no app. The founder is Bradley Wilkes, best known as the entrepreneur behind ProPay Inc., an innovative processor now owned by Total System Services Inc. (TSYS). WingCash is integrated with the ProPay platform, but it faces an uphill battle winning adoption on three fronts: consumers, banks, and merchants.

WU Pay

Parent: The Western Union Co.

Headquarters: Englewood, Colo.

Year Founded: 2012

Web site: westernunion.com/us/en/wupay-details.html

Field Notes: Consumers can make money transfers to businesses, including e-commerce merchants, and individuals from 17,000 online-banking sites that support the WU Pay service. If a prospective user doesn’t have a bank account, he can use WU Pay by going to a Western Union agent location. WU Pay uses technology from the eBillme online-payment platform that wire-transfer leader Western Union bought in 2011. The various services within Western Union’s consumer-to-business segment enable payments to more than 15,000 utilities, mortgage servicers, auto-finance companies and other billers.

Xoom Bill Pay

Parent: Xoom Corp.

Headquarters: San Francisco

Year Founded: 2014

Web site: xoom.com

Pricing: $2.99 for bill payments

Field Notes: In addition to its core online money-transfer service for sending money from the United States to individuals in 32 countries, Xoom in 2014 began offering Xoom Bill Pay, an online bill-payment service from the U.S. to utilities in five Latin American countries, the biggest being Mexico. Early last year Xoom bought BlueKite Ltd., a Guatemala-based developer of software applications for cross-border bill payments and mobile-phone reload services. Xoom customers fund their transactions from bank accounts through the automated clearing house network, or credit and debit cards. More than 90% of Xoom volume flows through the ACH.

ZipZap

Parent: ZipZap Inc.

Headquarters: San Francisco

Year Founded: 2010

Web site: zipzapinc.com

Field Notes: Founded as a way for consumers to pay cash to buy digital goods and money for virtual games, ZipZap now positions itself as a bridge between the worlds of virtual currency and more conventional payments. Last year, ZipZap worked with several Bitcoin exchanges to enable consumers to buy Bitcoin by paying cash at 28,000 locations in the United Kingdom. Later, ZipZap announced that 170 million unbanked consumers in Latin America could use cash to buy Bitcoin through its exchange partners.