Competitive Strategies

Real-time payments are getting more attention in financial services, and vendors are quickly enabling the faster-payment capability. Among the latest to do so is Sionic Corp., with its suite of services that includes its Verified Rapid Payments, and Oracle Corp., with a new set of cloud-based banking services. Atlanta-based Sionic …

The Merchants Payments Coalition released a letter it sent to the House Financial Services Committee arguing the Credit Card Competition Act should be enacted to block what the merchant-advocacy group calls a “national security threat” from China UnionPay, a China-based credit card network. The House committee has scheduled a hearing for this morning on “Combatting the …

Seeking to improve merchant adoption of PINless debit transactions, the U.S. Payments Forum Monday released a white paper detailing the potential obstacles to PINless debit implementation in the United States and how they can be overcome. One advantage of PINless debit transactions is that they can be processed faster than PIN-based debit transactions, …

A company called AmazeWallet over the weekend said it will soon launch a so-called super app that will let users run blockchain technology on a mobile phone. The app will run such functions as mining tokens, exchanging cryptocurrency, and sending encrypted messages, the London-based company noted. AmazeWallet said it has …

Card-issuing platform Marqeta Inc. closed on its acquisition of Power Finance Inc., a credit card management service. The $275-million deal was announced Jan. 30. U.S. semiconductor maker MKS Instruments Inc. reported it is investigating a ransomware attack that happened last week, according to Reuters. The company said it is temporarily suspending operations at some its plants. A group …

Clickatell, a U.S. provider of mobile commerce and messaging solutions, announced late Thursday it is partnering with South Africa-based airline FlySafair to enable the airline’s customers to pay for checked luggage using the WhatsApp messaging channel. To make a payment, the airline’s customers access the WhatsApp channel on their mobile …

With sports betting and casino gambling steadily gaining prominence as a payments market, payment processors are increasingly jumping on the opportunities the market presents. In the latest development, gaming-payments specialist Sightline Payments said it will offer its Play+ card, which has attracted 1.5 million users so far, as a Visa-branded …

Amazon.com Inc. reported net sales of $514 billion for 2022, up 9% over 2021, excluding an impact from changes in foreign-exchange rates. Sales in the North American market grew 13% over 2021, to $315.9 billion. The company recorded an operating loss of $2.8 billion in North America, swinging from a positive …

Merchant satisfaction with payment processors has dwindled in the past year, as sellers cope with the impact of inflation on their processing costs as well as on their business in general, according to J.D. Power’s 2023 U.S. Merchant Services Satisfaction Study. The merchant satisfaction score for merchant-services providers totaled 853, …

Citizens Financial Group Inc. has launched the Zelle peer-to-peer payments service for the bank’s small-business customers. U.S.-based Clickatell said it has deployed its Chat 2 Pay service with a pay-by-link capability for FlySafair, a South African airline for mobile payments via’s FlySafair’s WhatsApp channel. Payments provider Lightspeed Commerce Inc. announced it processed $22.4 billion in volume for …