Competitive Strategies

Some two-and-a-half years after it started, the Federal Reserve’s project to make U.S. payments faster and more secure is laying the groundwork for private industry to come up with something better than the mishmash that U.S. payments are today, but tangible results still could be years away. Fed officials and others …

Processor Square Inc. expects its strategy of providing what it calls a “cohesive” set of services to merchants will aid its efforts to reach profitability, the company reported Wednesday in its first-ever earnings result since becoming a publicly-traded company. It reported earnings for the fourth quarter and all of 2015. …

• Processor Jack Henry & Associates Inc. said its JHA Payment Solutions unit will hook into the The Clearing House Payment Co.’s pending real-time payment system, which could bring 6,300 banks and credit unions served by Jack Henry into the new network. • Digital Check Corp. launched two products this …

There’s nothing new about identifying e-commerce customers through the device they use, but now the proliferation of mobile devices has data scientists hatching new ways to thwart fraudsters. One way authenticates users through not-so-obvious links between the many devices they may rely on day-to-day. The other takes a close look …

Apple Pay has pulled up to the fuel pump at ExxonMobil Corp. gas stations with the release Tuesday of Speedpass+, an iOS app that enables consumers to use Apple Inc.’s mobile-payment service to pay for gas within the app. The app also is available for Android devices. It also works …

• On Track Innovations Ltd. launched its “My Chip Buddy” marketing effort to support the company’s newly introduced PayEnable platform, which allows manufacturers and designers to build payments capability into their products using near-field communication (NFC) technology. • Grocer The Kroger Co. says chargebacks related to its EMV rollout contributed …

• Four directors of cash-strapped Powa Technologies Ltd., including the startup’s founder and chief executive, Dan Wagner, were ousted from the board as long ago as Feb. 19, according to a report on BusinessInsider.com. The news follows the development on Thursday in which accounting firm Deloitte, appointed as administrator of …

Payment with a wearable device, such as a smart watch, wristband, or fitness monitor, has the potential to be used by 45% of wearables-owning consumers by 2020, finds the IHS “Wearable Payment Devices Report—2016” issued Wednesday. In four years, the global market for wearables will reach 340 million devices shipped, …

While the mobile wallets launched by corporate giants Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit, and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. have sparked a good deal of publicity, not much is known about actual adoption and usage so far, since the companies have been characteristically tightlipped. But that doesn’t mean researchers who …

MasterCard Inc. reportedly wants to acquire VocaLink Ltd., operator of the United Kingdom’s Faster Payments system, for just under £1 billion ($1.4 billion), according to reports in the British media Thursday. Such a deal, if consummated, could shake up the budding faster-payments movement in the U.S., where VocaLink is building …