Mobile Commerce

It’s more than 100 days until Christmas, but forecasts for the 2021 holiday shopping season are already rolling in. Mastercard Inc., in its SpendingPulse report released Monday, forecasts that U.S. holiday retail spending from Nov. 1 to Dec. 24 will increase 7.4% over 2020 and 11.1% over the same period …

Travel search engine Kayak Corp. said it will expand its offering of buy now, pay later capability through provider Uplift Inc. to include bookings on the mobile Web and through the Kayak app.In related news, Wisetack, which specializes in buy now, pay later services for home and auto repair, said it raised $45 …

Card-issuing platform Marqeta Inc. said in the first year of a partnership with Zip Co., an Australia-based buy now, pay later provider that recently changed its U.S. branding to Zip from Quadpay, it experienced a 350% year-over-year increase in BNPL net revenue in the 2021 second quarter.Payments and buy now, pay later …

JPMorgan Chase & Co. has agreed to buy close to 75% of Volkswagen’s payments platform, operated by Volkswagen Payments S.A. Terms of the deal were not announced. The unit supports in-car payments and other services in 32 markets worldwide.Clickatell, an online chat provider, launched Chat 2 Pay, a service that enables …

North American payments processors are focusing lately on bulking up resources in Latin America, largely via acquisition. The latest example is Montreal-based Nuvei Corp., which on Tuesday said it has acquired Paymentez LLC, a 10-year-old payments provider that enables more than 80 payment methods in Mexico as well as 10 …

PopID, a consumer authentication service, said its PopPay payment service is used more than more 100 restaurant and retail brands. Approximately 70,000 registered users have authenticated their faces more than 4 million times. PopID recently closed on a $10 million Series B funding round and intends to expand to college campuses across …

Vending-payment specialist Cantaloupe Inc. on Friday reported record revenue of $49 million for the June quarter, a 50.2% increase over the same period a year earlier, and a 14.6% increase from the same period in 2021.  Equipment revenue totaled $10.8 million during the quarter, a more than 100% increase from …

Accelerated adoption of digital payments during the pandemic helped drive up biometric identity checks by a factor of 20 for ComplyCube in the first half of the year compared to the same period in 2020, said the company, which specializes in anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer compliance.Park Place Payments said it signed with acquirer Payroc …

Zilch Technology Ltd. is preparing to become the latest entrant in the U.S. buy now, pay later market. The move hinges on the London-based company’s acquisition of San Francisco-based debt-funding platform Neptune Financial & Management Services LLC (NepFin), a deal Zilch announced on Thursday. The terms were not disclosed. The …

Giant pharmacy chain Walgreen Co. is getting into the banking and debit card business with the launch of Scarlet. Announced Thursday, Scarlet is a Mastercard-branded debit card issued by MetaBank. InComm Payments provides the system for the account. Scarlet works like most bank accounts and is designed to help accountholders …