Near-Field Communication (NFC)

Digital wallets and other forms of digitized payments may be poised to take over the most-favored position for some consumers. Sixty-six percent of consumers, if offered rewards, discounts, and cash-back incentives similar to those offered by credit cards, would switch to alternative ways to pay, finds the 2019 edition of …

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has been seeking lately to differentiate its 4-year-old Samsung Pay mobile payments service, and on Monday came its latest gambit: an integration with Curve 1 LTD, a London-based startup that allows cardholders to consolidate all of their Mastercard and Visa cards into a single card or …

Discover Financial Services said it will begin issuing contactless cards over the next several months, starting first this month with holders of Discover it and Discover More cards who need cards reissued or replaced. New cardholders will get contactless cards beginning in December.ACI Worldwide expanded its long-term relationship with ATM network operator …

Google Inc. agreed to acquire Fitbit Inc., producer of smart watches and the Fitbit Pay contactless-payment service, for approximately $2.1 billion. Fitbit has sold more than 100 million devices in its 12 years in business. Google, whose Google Pay mobile-payment service has been in the market since 2015, is part of Alphabet Inc. The …

Mastercard Inc. switched 20% more transactions on its worldwide network in the third quarter than it did a year earlier as purchase volumes remained strong and new growth markets generated more payments. “Growth was broad-based,” Mastercard president and chief executive Ajay Banga said Tuesday morning during the company’s third-quarter earnings …

Owners of small- and medium-size businesses (SMBs) generally have a negative outlook on the payments industry, and for good reason. The merchant-services world, in particular, has an ugly track record, including lackluster customer support, not to mention misleading sales practices that lead to costly processing rates, hidden fees, and burdensome …

The number of Apple Pay users has surpassed that of the Starbucks mobile-payments service, says eMarketer Inc., marking the first time a general-purpose mobile app has become more popular than the coffee retailer’s. New York City-based eMarketer counted 30.3 million U.S. Apple Pay users, while Starbucks had 25.2 million users. …

Galileo Financial Technologies, a 19-year-old developer of application programming interfaces for payments, announced a $77 million institutional funding round led by venture-capital firm Accel.Flowhub Holdings Inc., provider of a management platform for cannabis retailers, announced a Series A funding round whose participants included Iqram Magdon-Ismail, the co-founder and former CEO …

Days after launching services that allow users to make international remittances and use a virtual prepaid card for payments, Samsung Electronics Co. launched Samsung POS, an app that it says will let merchants accept near-field communication payments on their mobile devices. Developed with payments-technology firm Mobeewave, Samsung POS is aimed at micro-merchants and other small …

The honeymoon is over between vending-machine payments provider USA Technologies Inc. and its largest investor, which on Monday accused the company’s board of directors of “value-destructive conduct” and blasted its top brass for “lack of management qualifications or accountability.” The surly announcement by New York City-based hedge fund Hudson Executive …