Mobile Commerce

Amazon.com Inc.’s interest in launching a checking-account-like product, reported Tuesday by The Wall Street Journal, could have deep roots in its strategy both for payments in general and for Amazon Pay, the payment wallet it operates for non-Amazon sites, expert observers say. Talks between the Seattle-based retailing colossus and banks …

More than two years after the U.S. migration to EMV chip cards accelerated, evidence of the success of the effort continues to emerge. Merchant acquirer Square Inc. says nearly 92% of the transactions it processed as of December were made with EMV-enabled credit and debit cards. While the advent of …

Sweden’s Klarna Bank AB enjoyed a good year in 2017, as documented by results the privately held online-checkout and financing specialist released on Wednesday. The firm, which was founded in 2005 and has operated a U.S. unit, Klarna Inc., since 2015, had already achieved distinction by ranking third among so-called …

The merger of payment processors Vantiv Inc. and London-based Worldpay Group plc was completed Jan. 16, and up next for leaders of the combined company is integration of operational platforms, selling products to a wider customer base, and achieving their goal of $200 million in cost savings in three years. …

Square Inc. on Tuesday pulled back the curtain, at least a little bit, on its Cash App and the related Cash Card, a Visa-branded debit card. The app has 7 million active users, and cardholders spent $90 million using the card in December, good for annualized volume of $1 billion, …

Discover Financial Services cardholders will be able to make point-of-sale contactless purchases with wearables and Internet of Things devices that use FitPay Inc.’s FitPay Payment Platform under an agreement announced Monday by the two companies. The new service will provision payment credentials using the Discover Digital Exchange, Riverwoods, Ill.-based Discover’s …

For years, the change in card credentials that occurs when issuers send out replacement plastic has caused heartburn for cardholders and merchants alike. New card numbers, expiration dates, or three-digit card-verification values can help thwart fraud when cards are lost or stolen, but they also wreak havoc with unaware merchants, …

As Apple Pay’s global user base climbs to an estimated 127 million individuals, a mystery about why even more consumers don’t use Apple Inc.’s mobile-payment service confounds one researcher. Loup Ventures, a Minneapolis-based venture-capital firm, on Thursday released its annual Apple Pay review. Among its findings is that the estimated …

Some 2.7 million merchant locations, or 59% of U.S. storefronts, were accepting EMV chip cards as of December, according to the latest update from Visa Inc., issued Friday. That’s up from 392,000 locations in September 2015, just before the major card networks began enforcing a mandate for chip card acceptance. …

Visa Inc. launched Token Management Service, a service it says will make it easier for users to manage tokenized payment card data from multiple sources and across multiple channels, the card network announced Thursday. Designed to complement the Visa Token Service, the new program provides a way for merchants to use …