Competitive Strategies

Prepaid card provider Green Dot Corp. on Thursday announced a test with ride-sharing service Uber in which Uber drivers can be paid instantly via deposits into Green Dot’s subsidiary bank. Drivers for San Francisco-based Uber normally are paid once a week via direct deposit into financial accounts on file with …

Two mobile point-of-sale system providers are doing their part in the proliferation of such systems with the release of Click a Waiter Inc.’s white-label POS system and Aspex LLC’s deal with Frontier Airlines to provide an onboard POS system. Leominster, Mass.-based Click a Waiter Tuesday released a white-label version of …

First Data Corp. recently closed one office in Florida and plans to close a bigger one in New York next year, but the company still added 1,000 employees to its worldwide head count last year. Newsday, the newspaper of Long Island, N.Y., reported Tuesday that First Data filed a report …

  Most businesses thrive on referrals from existing clients, but acquirers and independent sales organizations get a surprisingly paltry number of referrals from the merchants they process for. In fact, fewer than 1% of merchants refer other merchants to their transaction servicer, even in the face of rewards such as …

• Dissident shareholder Harvest Capital Strategies LLC, owner of 7.8% of prepaid card provider Green Dot Corp., nominated three director candidates for election at Green Dot’s upcoming annual shareholder meeting. Green Dot issued a statement saying it had recently offered Harvest Capital the opportunity to appoint one director immediately and …

• Merchant processor Heartland Payment Systems Inc. announced an integration of its Portico Gateway with Computop Paygate in an arrangement that will give Heartland merchants access to international payments. Heartland is set to be acquired this spring by Global Payments Inc. in a $4.3 billion cash-and-stock deal announced in December. …

Its original Coinstar coin-counting business long overshadowed by its once-booming but now fading Redbox DVD and video-game rental business, Outerwall Inc. on Monday announced that it had hired investment banker Morgan Stanley & Co. “to explore strategic and financial alternatives” for Outerwall shareholders. The company simultaneously announced that would double …

• Visa Inc. unveiled a new interactive button for its Visa Checkout online and mobile commerce service that allows shoppers to complete an online purchase by sliding a virtual image of their credit, debit or prepaid card across the screen of a smart phone, tablet, or laptop. • Visa will have its …

Multilane retailers provided much of the revenue lift that payment-acceptance hardware and software provider VeriFone Systems Inc. has enjoyed for the past couple of years as the U.S. prepped for the Oct. 1, 2015, EMV liability shift, but many of the big retailers have now completed their EMV purchases. Yet …

• The nation’s movement toward faster payments took a step forward with Early Warning LLC’s announcement that it is now processing real-time peer-to-peer payments for Bank of America Corp. and U.S. Bancorp. Customers of these banks can send payments via mobile or online banking apps to other customers of either …