Marketing

First Data Corp. released its Holiday Insights dashboard, which shows real-time U.S. holiday spending trends, such as total spend percentage increase, today’s most active categories with average ticket and total transactions, and regional payment volume. To date, it indicates retail spending from Thanksgiving through Black Friday increased 6.4% year-over-year. Cardfree Inc., …

After slipping the previous two years, spending at independent shops and restaurants jumped 38% to an estimated $17.8 billion on Small Business Saturday, American Express Co. and the National Federation of Independent Business trade group reported Monday. AmEx founded the Saturday-after-Thanksgiving promotion in 2010 to highlight locally owned businesses in …

Processor Pineapple Payments said it is offering merchant services on the platform of OnPay Solutions, a provider of accounts-payable and accounts-receivable automation services for businesses. First Data Corp. launched its Clover Mini and Clover Flex smart point-of-sale terminals in Argentina. Elo, a bank-owned payment network in Brazil, agreed to work with …

As Chinese tourists pour into the United States and Canada, merchants are preparing for them by outfitting their checkouts to accept WeChat Pay and Alipay, the two leading Chinese mobile-payments services. The latest is 7-Eleven Inc., which said Tuesday it is enabling acceptance of the two wallets at 35 stores …

Mene Inc., an online jewelry merchant, agreed to use a real-time consumer-credit program from Affirm Inc., a payments and lending platform. Citigroup Inc.’s treasury and trade solutions unit said it extended its Citi Payment Insights service to 20 new markets, bringing to 70 the number of global markets where the …

Payments provider SignaPay released a mobile app for Apple and Android devices called PayLo Mobile Sales to help sales agents selling the PayLo Cash Discount product. Installment-payments provider Sezzle said it raised $100 million in funding from Bastion Capital. Since launching the service more than a year ago, Sezzle says …

Ever since mobile payments first captured the public imagination four years ago with the launch of Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay, experts have debated why usage of the iOS and Android wallets has fallen short of the original, lofty expectations. Some speculate that usage would rise markedly if the mobile wallets …

Giant card issuer Chase once again will issue contactless credit and debit cards, the bank announced Wednesday. Chase, a unit of JPMorgan Chase & Co., says it will begin later this year issuing contactless EMV cards bearing the Visa Inc. brand, first to its Chase Freedom Unlimited and Chase Slate …

Rewards platform provider Cardlytics Inc. on Tuesday reported its user base and revenue per active user grew in the third quarter, but the company nonetheless trimmed its full-year revenue forecast. The company’s primary product, Cardlytics Direct, provides merchant-funded rewards programs distributed through financial institutions’ online and mobile-banking sites. Cardlytics Direct …

The e-commerce platform BigCommerce Pty Ltd. on Wednesday announced two new supported payment methods, including PayPal Holdings Inc.’s Venmo service. With the addition of Venmo, Austin-based BigCommerce gave a big lift to PayPal’s strategy  to find revenue for what has been a fast-growing but free peer-to-peer payment service, though merchant pricing …