Competitive Strategies

The Zelle person-to-person payments service is about to take on a public face as bank-owned parent company Early Warning Services LLC readies a multifaceted marketing campaign for rollout in the coming weeks and months. “I would say it’s a significant marketing campaign focused on awareness,” Melissa Lowry, vice president of …

• U.K.-based merchant-processing giant Worldpay Group Plc reported its U.S. revenue, which accounts for more than a quarter of its total revenue, increased 15.5% to $299 million in 2016, though the company pointed to weakness in its U.S. business that hurt its overall performance. Average U.S. transaction value declined 2.2% to …

• Merchant processor Harbortouch Payments LLC said it will integrate cloud-based purchasing and inventory-control software from Sarbari into its point-of-sale offering for the restaurant industry. • Processor and payments-tech developer Dwolla Inc. said it has brought its application programming interface for same-day automated clearing house transactions out of pilot. With this move, …

The restaurant industry has become a focal point for mobile payments, what with efforts to tie payments to technology like mobile loyalty, order-ahead, and delivery apps to appeal to deal-seeking, time-starved diners. Now comes news that startups offering restaurant technology are consistently attracting financing exceeding half a billion dollars annually—a …

When it comes to contactless electronic payment transactions, the U.S. payments industry seems to be more interested in using smart phones than plastic debit or credit cards. But other countries have gone the opposite route. In the United Kingdom, for example, spending on contactless cards reached a record £3.4 billion …

Processor First Data Corp. and Fleetcor Technologies Inc. are forming a joint venture to consolidate their gift card businesses, First Data announced Monday. The joint venture, whose name was not released, combines First Data’s gift card business, digital gift-card provider Transaction Wireless Inc., and its Gyft unit, with Fleetcor’s Stored …

Mobile order-ahead-and-pay functionality has been adopted lately by restaurants ranging from Starbucks Corp. to Chick-fil-A. But with the announcement on Wednesday by McDonald’s Corp. that it will offer the service on its mobile app, the world’s largest hamburger chain could finally push mobile payments into the consumer mainstream. At an …

• A small group of protesters came to the Ottawa, Ontario, headquarters of e-commerce services provider Shopify Inc. Thursday to deliver a stack of 140,000 signatures from people opposed to Shopify’s business dealings with alt-right news service Breitbart News, which runs its Web store on Shopify’s platform. • Roberts Hawaii, a tour-bus and airport-shuttle …

• McDonald’s Corp. is adding order-ahead and payment features to its mobile app as part of a new global growth strategy; mobile order and pay will be enabled in 20,000 restaurants in the U.S. and other countries by year’s end, the fast-food giant giant said. • Dwolla Inc. has introduced Transfer, …

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