Competitive Strategies

• Payments provider Dwolla Inc. announced a $6.85 million round of funding led by Union Square Ventures and Foundry Group. The funds will be used to expand sales and account-management operations at the company’s Des Moines, Iowa office. Dwolla also said it is moving its white-label products into a new collection of application …

It’s taken about a year, but Dwolla Inc. has now executed a strategic shift away from handling online and mobile transactions directly for consumers who want to pay merchants and each other. Instead, the 8-year-old, Des Moines, Iowa-based company now focuses on selling programming to clients that want to process …

The digital-payments revolution may finally be poised to relegate cash to the sidelines of finance. Worldwide, 471 billion so-called cashless transactions flowed through payments networks in 2015, a 52% increase since the end of 2011 and up 13% over 2014, according to numbers released this week by Retail Banking Research …

• Mastercard Inc. and investor and philanthropist George Soros announced plans “to explore private-sector solutions to societal challenges” by possibly creating a so-called social enterprise called Humanity Ventures that will apply commercial strategies to address such problems as joblessness and lack of access to health care and education. Soros might …

Shipping costs and the total price are two primary inhibitors for consumers shopping online, found a survey from FuturePay Inc., which provides financing for online purchases. Indeed, 86% of the 1,500 consumers surveyed in the fourth quarter cited the cost of shipping as the top reason they opted not to …

The Electronic Transactions Association went on record Tuesday supporting the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s proposed limited-purpose national bank charter for financial technology companies, but a national trade group of small banks “expressed strong concerns” about the idea. The opinions expressed by the ETA and the Independent Community …

• The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority has accepted in principle a number of proposals Mastercard Inc. has made to dispel concerns the agency expressed earlier this month about the planned $920 million merger of Mastercard and the U.K.-based payments-technology firm VocaLink. The CMA had been concerned that the merger would hand Mastercard …

Payments provider Clearent LLC is buying Payment Alliance International’s merchant-services division, which serves more than 17,000 merchants, for an undisclosed amount, Clearent announced Wednesday. The deal adds $4.2 billion in processing volume to Clearent, pushing the combined entity’s total processing volume to $14 billion and its total number of merchants …

Leading retail ATM network owner and operator Cardtronics plc announced expanded agreements Tuesday with the big drug-store chain Walgreens and banking giant Citigroup Inc. that will put Citi’s brand on more than 1,000 Cardtronics ATMs in Walgreens and Duane Reade stores in some key markets, including New York City and …

Retailers wondering about the role of smart phones in their stores might take this figure into account: 36% of U.S. shoppers purchase via a mobile device frequently, and consider it a part of their regular purchasing behavior. That’s the finding from a recent DMI Inc. survey. DMI is a Bethesda, …