Competitive Strategies

Biometric authentication may be coming into its own as a tool to aid financial institutions and payments companies in serving their customers. At financial institutions, as much as $20.75 million is saved annually using biometric authentication instead of SMS one-time password services, says Reston, Va.-based Daon Inc., a biometric-services company, …

Few businesses have been more targeted by the trend toward integrated payments than restaurants, and late on Thursday that trend unfolded further with Global Payments Inc.’s agreement to lay out $490 million in cash for Sicom Systems Inc., a Lansdale, Pa.-based developer of both front- and back-of-the-store management systems for …

A new micropayment platform called Qoins has just closed a first round of funding for $1 million. The app allows users to pay off debt by rounding up purchases to the nearest dollar and sending the excess to the creditor, with a focus on credit card and student debt. Qoins …

For nine years, PayNearMe has focused on enabling consumers without access to payment cards to make cash payments for online goods at point-of-sale terminals in what has grown to a network of some 27,000 merchant locations. On Thursday, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company said it now can process credit, debit, and …

BNY Mellon has become the first bank client to sign a reseller agreement with Early Warning Services’ Zelle person-to-person payment network for tokenized disbursements to consumers. Zelle indicated earlier this year it would expand into disbursements as a potential field for fee-based payment services. Zelle also announced Dollar Bank now offers Zelle …

The world currently has 40 real-time payments systems versus only 25 just a year ago, payment processor Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) reported Wednesday. What’s more, five such programs are under development, and another 16 should be live in 12 months to 18 months, Jacksonville, Fla.-based FIS says in …

EBay Inc. on Tuesday announced it has “begun managing payments” on its massive marketplace and said it expects to have a “majority” of sellers converted to the new program by 2021. Under the new payments regime, sellers will encounter lower transaction costs, eBay’s announcement said, though it did not offer …

Payment gateway USAePay completed EMV certification for First Data Corp.’s Rapid Connect platform. USAePay said the certification enables merchants to accept EMV payments, particularly EMV PIN-debit transactions, via its mobile application. First Data Corp. launched a service for card issuers called FirstSense that combines threat intelligence with the company’s fraud-detection …

It’s another go-around for contactless payments as Visa Inc. prepares an extensive campaign involving issuers, merchants, and consumers to push use of the payment method. The card brand on Tuesday debuted an infographic on contactless payments from across the globe, and touted the preparedness of the U.S. market for the …

U.S. Bancorp is selling its ATM managed-services and debit-servicing businesses to Fiserv Inc. for a price that the parties say is “approximately” $690 million. The assets Fiserv is acquiring, which are part of U.S. Bancorp’s Elan Financial Services unit, also include the MoneyPass surcharge-free ATM network, which links 33,000 machines …