Competitive Strategies

Grocer The Kroger Co. launched Kroger Pay and the Kroger Rewards debit card. Kroger Pay, available for iOS and Android mobile devices, is a Quick Response code-based mobile-payment service, which also includes digital coupons and personalized offers. Currently, Kroger Pay is available in Columbus, Ohio, with plans for nationwide expansion …

While global card expenditures will increase 80% to $45 trillion by 2023 from $25 trillion in 2017, growth in the United States will be slow compared to other regions because the U.S. is already a well-developed market, says RBR Research in its “Global Payment Cards Data and Forecasts to 2023” …

Fidelity National Information Services Inc. expects further processor mergers in the near term and isn’t averse to initiating them in cases where they fit the company’s strategy, its chairman and chief executive said Tuesday morning. “We will always look for opportunities,” said Gary Norcross, who is also president of the …

E-commerce and payment-services provider Shopify Inc. said fourth-quarter gross payment volume hit $5.8 billion, up approximately 65% from $2.3 billion a year earlier. The net loss narrowed to $1.5 million versus $3 million in 2017’s fourth quarter. Merchant acquirer Elavon in partnership with American Express Co. unveiled a service intended …

Speed is a key selling point for person-to-person payments, but many P2P users aren’t taking advantage of real-time payment capabilities offered by their providers, according to research firm Aite Group LLC. Answers from 693 consumers who had used a digital P2P account to receive money in the 12 months ending …

Payments provider ACI Worldwide launched new, cloud-based in-store technologies for merchant clients as part of the company’s UP Merchant Payments product. The new services are based on ACI’s recent acquisitions of payments-technology firms RevChip and TranSend. Maverick BankCard said its automated clearing house platform is now available. The e-check service …

While one cannot deny the rise of social commerce and its pertinence to the overarching e-commerce industry, studies have shown that social-commerce strategies do not lead to as many purchases as you may think.  For example, Twitter recently phased out a buy button because it wasn’t seeing results, and another …

The tug-of-war over Earthport PLC continues. Visa Inc. upped its offer for the British business-to-business payment processor in a bidding war that started after Mastercard Inc. topped Visa’s original price. Visa is now offering 37 pence per share, which values the company at £247 million ($320.4 million). Visa’s new offer …

Mastercard Inc. introduced a so-called sonic brand identity, including a melody that will play when users deploy Mastercard in physical, digital, or voice commerce. Wells Fargo & Co. said late Thursday that its ATMs were back in service after an outage affected the bank’s ATMs, online and mobile banking services, …

Twenty-two days of talking to clients haven’t dampened Fiserv Inc.’s conviction that offering to buy First Data Corp. is the right move. In fact, if anything these conversations seem to have buoyed top executives’ confidence in the proposed $22 billion all-stock acquisition of the big processor. “We’ve spent a substantial …