Competitive Strategies

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews While many observers have lamented the apparently slow growth in consumers’ adoption of mobile payments, that doesn’t mean more consumers aren’t using mobile devices each year to buy things. It also doesn’t mean users aren’t getting more comfortable buying bigger-ticket items via mobile channels. Surveys by …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews Charles Scharf accomplished a lot in less than four years as Visa Inc.’s chief executive—he oversaw Visa’s acquisition of Visa Europe, a groundbreaking peace accord with PayPal Holdings Inc., and a cobranding and acceptance deal with Costco Wholesale Corp., among other things—but one of his unfinished tasks …

• Mobile e-commerce grew 60% last year to reach $120 billion, with 70% of that total coming through browsers (50%) and apps (20%) accessed via smart phones, according to a new report from Javelin Strategy & Research. • Routine usage of mobile devices to make payments remains flat with last …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews While many experts have cited anecdotal evidence that more consumers would adopt and use mobile wallets if they could earn, manage, and redeem

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews With American Express Co. set to report its third-quarter financials Wednesday, the payments industry and Wall Street will be watching for signs from the beleaguered travel-and-entertainment giant about how it will recover from the loss of its cobranded card and acceptance relationship with Costco Wholesale Corp. AmEx …

• Bank of America Corp. said its debit card purchase volumes totaled $71 billion in the third quarter, up 2.5% from $69.3 billion a year earlier. U.S. credit card purchase volume increased 2% to $57.6 billion. BofA said it now has 21.3 million mobile-banking users, a 15.8% increase from 18.4 …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Visa Inc. stunned the payments industry late Monday with an announcement that its chief executive, Charles Scharf, has resigned, effective Dec. 1. Scharf will be replaced by Alfred F. Kelly, a 23-year veteran of American Express Co. and currently a Visa board member. Kelly, whose service …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews While the payments business is caught up these days in working out strategies for mobile apps and social media, it turns out these aren’t the cutting-edge technologies they once were. Instead, fields like virtual reality, machine learning, and natural language are winning the spotlight. That’s according …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews Its first full quarter of ownership of the big Costco Wholesale Corp. cobranded credit card portfolio helped to boost Citigroup Inc.’s North American purchase volume by 57%, the giant New York City-based bank reported Friday.

• The rash of hotel breaches continues. Noble House Hotels & Resorts said it confirmed that a payment card system used at its Teton Mountain Lodge & Spa and Hotel Terra may have been breached between Sept. 5 and Sept. 6. The company said there are no indications the breach …