Competitive Strategies

Expanding on an acceptance relationship that began last October at high-end merchant locations in California and New York, processor First Data Corp. on Tuesday said it will offer its 4 million U.S. merchants in-store acceptance of the Chinese online and mobile-payment service Alipay, which is used by 450 million people …

Having built a successful payments processor and sold it to Global Payments Inc., Bob Carr is ready to build another company, but this time with a purpose beyond simply making money. Carr’s latest endeavor is Beyond, launched May 1, just over a year from the closing of Global Payments’ $4.3 …

• Visa Inc. said its April 2019 date for compliance with 3-D Secure 2.0, an online-commerce fraud-prevention standard, applies globally. In 2016, Visa had said compliance would start with Europe in April 2018. “We felt it was easier for our various stakeholders to have a single global date, so we aligned Europe accordingly,” …

Ever since Apple Inc. raised the profile of mobile wallets with its launch of Apple Pay in 2014, observers have questioned how widely consumers would take up the newfangled payment gadgets. The latest study shows that while adoption is widespread, it has stalled in recent months. The good news for …

Today, Canadian businesses and financial institutions employ several different standards or “languages” to make and receive payments across systems, financial markets and borders. Payments are also lacking valuable data, such as invoice or remittance information – which is key to automated processing and electronic payments. To mitigate these issues, labor-intensive …

First Data Corp. reported Monday that transaction volume in its North American merchant-acquiring business grew 7% year-over-year in the first quarter to 11.5 billion. Attrition in First Data’s direct small and mid-sized (SMB) merchant business, which had been a problem for more than a year, improved, but sales leads from …

• Visa Inc. announced that its 3-D Secure 2.0 program will begin in April 2019. 3-D Secure 2.0 is a measure managed by EMVCo that shares e-commerce transaction data between merchants and issuers in an effort to thwart fraudulent transactions and approve valid ones. EMVCo released the updated spec in October 2016. • Visa said grocer …

• Repeal of the Durbin Amendment took a step closer to reality with the passage of the Financial Choice Act by the House Financial Services Committee by a 34-26 vote. The full House is expected to take up the bill by the end of the month. • MoneyGram International Inc. said …

• Two executives of Commerce Payment Systems, which had been a Hewlett, N.Y.-based independent sales organization, have been charged in a $30 million scheme that overbilled more than 10,000 merchants, announced the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York this week following the unsealing of an indictment. The charges …

Online merchants looking to increase their sales volume may want to consider offering instant financing. A study by Researchscape International reveals that 75% of respondents would be more likely to purchase from an online retailer that offers instant financing than one that does not. Another 28% said they would be …