Competitive Strategies

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews For years, pundits have said consumers trust banks more than any other entity when it comes to payments options, but that doesn’t mean financial institutions are always delivering the most innovative services. Now a review of mobile-banking and -payments offerings indicates even the nation’s biggest banks …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews The first business day of 2016’s fourth quarter produced several announcements about payments-industry acquisitions. In the biggest, globe-trotting ATM network operator Cardtronics plc will gain a toehold in the Asia-Pacific region by acquiring Canadian ATM firm DirectCash Payments Inc. (DCPayments) for $460 million. Meanwhile, Meta Financial Group …

• ATM network operator Cardtronics plc announced it plans to buy Canadian ATM operator DirectCash Payments Inc. (DCPayments) for $460 million; DC Payments operates 25,000 ATMs and will give Cardtronics its first presence in Australia and New Zealand and expand its operations in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Mexico. • …

http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/dt/201610/

As the automated clearing house network gets set to start a process that will over time speed up all ACH credit and debit transactions to same-day settlement, the ACH’s governing body late this summer took an important step toward controlling the risk posed by certain non-bank players that stand between …

Even though the payments industry is undergoing an unprecedented attack by fraudsters, funding of cybersecurity startups by top investors will drop somewhat this year compared to 2015, according to the latest data from CBInsights, a New York City-based firm that tracks venture-capital investment. Total cybersecurity funding deals this year are …

• Processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) reported that John Shlonsky, senior executive vice president of TSYS, and president of TSYS’s Merchant Services segment, has resigned effective Oct 7. Shlonsky joined TSYS in April with the company’s acquisition of merchant processor TransFirst Holdings Inc., where he was president and CEO. …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews With Citigroup Inc.’s decision to join the network, the bank-controlled clearXchange person-to-person payments service has dramatically expanded its reach at a crucial time—just as it faces increasing competition from nonbank P2P rivals and in advance of a major rebranding set to take effect next year. The …

• The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to a New York state law barring retailers from imposing credit card surcharges, Reuters reported. A federal appellate court upheld the law a year ago; nine other states have similar laws. • Online business lender Merchant Advance Capital said it …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Payments networks face a competitive landscape marked by rapid innovation, so the two biggest systems, Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc., are responding by increasing the access developers have to their once tightly guarded skunk works. The latest move comes Wednesday from MasterCard, which announced MasterCard Developers. …