Competitive Strategies

Sarah Friar, chief financial officer of merchant processor Square Inc., will leave the company in December after six years to become chief executive of Nextdoor, developer of a private social-network app for neighborhoods. David Viniar, Square’s lead independent director, will lead the search for a new CFO. Square’s stock fell …

After years of planning and deliberation, the payments industry is starting to announce services based on real-time processing. One of the first is Mastercard Inc., which on Wednesday unveiled a system that will allow consumers to view bills and then transfer funds to the billers within seconds. Experts see an …

The average ATM surcharge increased this year for the 14th year in a row, but ATM foreign fees eased a bit, according to Bankrate Inc.’s latest annual study of ATM and checking account fees. New York City-based Bankrate says the average surcharge is now $3.02, up 5 cents, or 1.7%, …

Fiserv Inc. said it connected more than 100 banks and credit unions so far to the Zelle peer-to-peer payments network. The institutions are now live or will be going live soon, the company said. The average surcharge assessed by the ATM owner for an out-of-network transaction rose for the 14th …

Check scams come in many forms. It could start with someone offering to buy something you advertised in the newspaper, on Craigslist, or eBay. Or someone could offer to pay you to do work at home, give you an “advance” on a sweepstake you’ve supposedly won, or pay the first …

Online-commerce analytics firm eMarketer Inc. is out with its 2018 holiday spending forecast, and it has some encouraging news for merchant acquirers, especially those in the e-commerce and mobile-commerce space. New York City-based eMarketer’s “Holiday Shopping 2018: A Strong Economy Sets the Stage for a Spending Surge” report predicts total …

Merchants using CardFlight Inc.’s mobile point-of-sale app can now use a service called SwipeSimple Customers to help manage their customer data, card-on-file data, and payments, CardFlight announced Tuesday. Among the new features are the ability to create and maintain a customer database with an option to store payment card details …

Merchant processor Elavon rolled out its self-test platform for providers of payment hardware and software developers to streamline needed certification processes from the card networks and for EMV chip card acceptance; Elavon says the platform can reduce previous four-week certification times to 24 to 48 hours and eliminate the need …

Small merchants are generating more payment volume, and health-care providers handily outlive restaurants and bars in their relationships with merchant acquirers, according to a new analysis from The Strawhecker Group. Data from the Omaha, Neb.-based consulting and research firm’s Acquiring Industry Metrics service shows that the average small and mid-size …

Terminal maker Verifone Systems Inc. launched EX-Receipt, a cloud-based system that generates an electronic receipt at gas pumps via text or email for enrolled customers, replacing the customary paper receipt. NCR Corp. introduced mobile-payment and -loyalty capability for Enmarket Convenience Stores, a chain of 123 c-stores and 14 quick-service restaurants …