Competitive Strategies

With its contested annual shareholder meeting coming up in less than three weeks, embattled Green Dot Corp. chief executive Steve Streit on Wednesday said the prepaid card card and mobile-banking provider and tax-payment processor’s prospects are improving as key measures of customer activity strengthen. Pasadena, Calif.-based Green Dot reported first-quarter …

MasterCard Inc. expects the first wearable payment devices for use on its network to be available later this year, Sherri Haymond, senior vice president for digital payments for MasterCard, tells Digital Transactions News. The devices are part of MasterCard’s Commerce for Every Device Program, which is intended to add payment …

For Houston-based Cardtronics Inc., Europe is the new land of opportunity, so much so that the leading ATM network owner and operator plans to “redomicile” in the United Kingdom. The move is likely to cut the company’s tax rate, possibly by half, but Cardtronics says that’s just one of several …

MasterCard Inc. in the three months ending March 31 posted its biggest increase in processed transactions in two-and-a-half years, thanks to strong U.S. volumes and growth in many, if not all, other markets. The No. 2 payment card network Thursday reported its processed transactions totaled 12.6 billion in the first …

The Electronic Transactions Association, a trade group based in Washington, D.C., that represents the merchant-services industry, has opened an office in San Francisco, its first outside of the nation’s capital. The move is indicative of Silicon Valley’s growing presence within the payments industry and, specifically, within merchant services, says Jason …

It may have started with the likes of PayPal Holdings Inc. and Square Inc., but it isn’t stopping there. Having made their mark in merchant processing, high-tech payments firms are increasingly turning their attention to the business of offering funding to the merchants they serve. The move is bringing them …

• Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook reported at the company’s latest quarterly earnings call that the Apple Pay contactless mobile-payment service “is growing at a tremendous rate” and has more than five times the transaction volume it had a year ago, but he didn’t give numbers. The service, which is …

Merchants attempting to create more digital experiences in their stores and restaurants because of consumer expectations are finding security of payments to be a significant challenge, finds the “Step Up The In-Person Experience” report issued by Forrester Consulting Inc. Commissioned by tablet point-of-sale maker Revel Systems, the report examines how …

With just five days remaining, organizations developing so-called faster-payments systems are submitting proposals for evaluation by a consulting firm retained by the Federal Reserve Board’s Faster Payments Task Force. On Monday, The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC, which is building a real-time payments system with Fidelity National Information Services Inc., …

Despite 7% transaction growth, First Data Corp. on Monday reported that revenue in the company’s North American merchant-processing business declined 2% in the first quarter. In an early-morning conference call with analysts, First Data executives several times blamed attrition among small and mid-sized North American businesses, or SMBs, in its …