With e-commerce sales booming, payments players are looking for combinations that can keep online customers engaged and add even more buyers to their ranks.  An example emerged Thursday morning as Shopify Inc. and Affirm Inc. announced Affirm’s buy now, pay later service is now available to “hundreds of thousands” of U.S. …

Consumer spending has now been recovering for a full year from the impact of Covid-19, according to a report released on Wednesday by Visa Inc. The card network’s U.S. Spending Momentum Index, which it began releasing publicly last month, registered a reading of 123.3 for May. That number indicates 59% …

One way to boost mobile-wallet usage for functions like payments is to more tightly integrate the apps into users’ daily lives. Apple Inc. followed that script with its preview on Monday of an update for watchOS8, the brains behind its Apple Watch.  This fall, the refresh will allow users to …

Pundits have predicted for months that cash acceptance will decline markedly as consumers rush into electronic payments. But sellers view cash as a less-expensive option for them, and some payments providers are looking to cater to that view. On Monday, VizyPay LLC said it is opening its cash-discount app to …

Most payments processors that deal in digital currencies let consumers pay with Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies and then may translate that money into dollars or other fiat money for the merchant. On Thursday, a company called Paxful Inc. announced a service that appears to do the opposite: it lets users …

Vendors of parking apps in North America have an even more potent new competitor with the closing on Tuesday of EasyPark Group’s acquisition of the Park Now Group, which includes Atlanta-based ParkMobile LLC. The deal, which the companies announced in March, brings a major North American stake to Stockholm-based EasyPark, …

With merchants of all sizes looking to get in on the rush to e-commerce triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic, Square Inc. announced Thursday morning a service that lets sellers set up a product listing on Google. The new program, aimed at merchants using Square for Retail, aims at simplifying online …

Sift Science Inc. has agreed to acquire Chargeback Inc., a specialist in applying dispute-resolution technology to help merchants resolve chargebacks. Terms were not announced. The deal comes as card-not-present fraud in particular is soaring as consumers over the past year have adopted online shopping, many for the first time. U.S. …

Much of the publicity swirling around blockchain technology concerns its use for recording and managing cryptocurrency, but there has been little talk about using blockchain to manage merchant transactions. GreenBox POS, a San Diego-based processor, changed that on Monday with its announcement that it has secured a bank identification number, or …

A payments trend that has gained some momentum during the pandemic is open banking, the idea that funds can validated and moved from an account to another one at a different bank inexpensively and by means other than cards or checks. On Thursday, that concept took a big step forward …