Marketing

Netspend, the prepaid card unit of processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS), will pay $53 million as part of a settlement it reached with the Federal Trade Commission over allegations concerning how it handled some marketing materials. The settlement, announced Friday, calls for Netspend to set aside $40 million to …

Co-Op Financial Services, the big credit-union service organization based in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., announced Monday that it had acquired Des Moines, Iowa-based payment processor TMG for $100 million. Co-Op had been the minority owner of TMG, until recently known as The Members Group, and bought out the rest of the …

As mobile-wallet backers wrestle with the right mix of features and functions—loyalty, offers, and payments—to incentivize consumers and merchants to use their products, they should get accustomed to waiting. That was the word Thursday in Orlando, Fla., from speakers at the 2017 Payments Summit, sponsored by the Secure Technology Alliance. …

Chatbots have been carrying out commerce on messenger apps only since last spring, yet already some observers are less than thrilled with the experience, says Zephrin Lasker, chief executive and cofounder of a startup called ShopChat. “Many companies are pursuing robot assistant chatbots to interact with people on messaging. These …

In the battle over online bill payments, biller sites have been beating bank and third-party sites handily, but now the battle has turned into a rout. Biller sites accounted for fully 73% of online bills paid by consumers last year, up from 62% in 2010, according to a report from …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews It has become an article of faith that mobile payments capability alone won’t excite consumers. The challenge lies in how to meld loyalty with payments in a single tap at checkout for multiple retail chains. On Friday, Urban Airship Inc. announced an integration of its Reach …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews Square Inc.’s gross payment volume rose 34% year-over-year in the fourth quarter, generating strong revenues and other financial metrics despite large merchants accounting for a bigger share of volume. The San Francisco-based merchant processor late Wednesday afternoon also gave an upbeat outlook for 2017, all of which …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews CareCredit, the health-care financing unit of the big private-label and cobranded credit card provider

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews A year ago, Visa Inc. expanded its Visa Ready program beyond mobile point-of-sale terminals to support tokenized payments on a wide variety of Internet-connected devices. On Thursday, the payments company took the next step in that plan, announcing a collaboration with IBM Corp. that will allow …

Payments companies are taking strides toward integrating rewards for everyday purchases into mobile wallets, while making it easier to redeem those rewards at point-of-sale terminals. Last month, vending-payments specialist USA Technologies Inc. said it is integrating its MORE. loyalty platform into Apple Pay. The deal is designed to induce more …