Competitive Strategies

The 7-year-old startup Affirm Inc. has already signed up more than 2,000 merchants to accept its instant-financing option, but on Wednesday it announced it had bagged the biggest one of all: Walmart Inc. In a move that extends Affirm to the physical point of sale in a major way, users …

CannaTrac, a cashless mobile-payment service for the cannabis industry, released an application programming interface for point-of-sale software developers. JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon told investors the bank’s JPM Coin, a blockchain-based token now in test for intrabank corporate payments, one day could be offered to consumers, Bloomberg reported. …

For all the talk about financial-technology firms and non-bank processors encroaching on banks’ turf, acquiring banks still outdo the upstarts when it comes to having satisfied merchant customers, according to J.D. Power’s first in-depth study of the merchant-acquiring industry. The online study of 3,500 small businesses nationwide last October and …

SuiteRetail, a Wilmington, Del.-based point-of-sale software developer, completed integration of  Stripe Inc.’s merchant-processing services into its apps, giving merchants the ability to use Stripe for their in-store and online transactions. Merchants using SuiteRetail’s SuitePOS for NetSuite or Salesforce now can complete their online processor and store set-up for Stripe. The …

The global processor Worldpay Inc. is beating its own expectations in knitting together the assets combined in the huge merger of Vantiv Inc. and Worldpay plc and is looking to make more acquisitions this year, top executives said Tuesday. Speaking to stock analysts to discuss Cincinnati-based Worldpay’s fourth-quarter and full-year …

Hackers gained unauthorized access to credit or debit card data stored with software company CentralSquare Technologies and used for one-time water-bill payments made through the city of Pompano Beach, Fla.’s Web site from Aug. 30 to Dec. 6, 2018, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported. Nearly 3,800 customers made one-time payments …

Puerto Rico-based payment processor Evertec Inc. suffered along with the rest of the island when hurricanes Irma and especially Maria swept through in September 2017 and destroyed homes, businesses, and the electrical grid, but now Evertec’s payment volumes are surging as the island recovers. Puerto Rican transaction volumes were up …

A bevy of fees levied by the two major card networks is offsetting much of the fee relief merchants receive from the 7-year-old Durbin Amendment, according to new findings from a payments-research firm that is studying the issue on behalf of the retail industry. While the Durbin caps on debit …

NCR Corp. announced it acquired BEC, said to be a leading provider in Colorado of point-of-sale technology for the hospitality industry. BEC, which accounts for 2,600 sites, has been an NCR reseller for 23 years. Terms were not announced. After years of unsuccessful attempts to win government approval to operate …

The federal court handling the long-running class-action litigation between merchants on one hand and big banks and Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. on the other announced on Friday it has granted “preliminary approval” to a settlement that could award between $5.54 billion and $6.24 billion to merchant plaintiffs. The parties …