Person-to-Person Payments

The newbie bank-controlled Zelle person-to-person payments service already is a major player on the P2P scene, but it could win even greater adoption through clear messaging, a mobile-first orientation, more emphasis on its underutilized request feature, and an appeal beyond Millennials. Those and many other recommendations and observations are included …

As the emergence of smart phones and online services make cross-border remittances easier and less costly for users, companies have emerged to serve that fast-growing market. The latest move comes from WorldRemit, an 8-year-old firm that last week expanded into the state of New York, home to 4.5 million immigrants. …

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, …

Last year, the Federal Reserve set a goal of having ubiquitous faster payments available in the United States by 2020, and now the first estimates are emerging of just how much dollar volume will flow across systems already in place and in progress. The total will come to $650 billion …

Online and mobile offers provider Groupon Inc. reported Wednesday that 2.7 million Visa and Mastercard card holders are using its new Groupon+ service to get discounts at restaurants without presenting a voucher. And wire-transfer provider The Western Union Co. says its online consumer-to-consumer payment transactions rose 22% in the fourth …

The prepaid market can expect to grow more than 7% annually over five years, but unlike its early days in which plastic gift cards and government payments dominated, much of the growth will come from new virtual uses for prepaid products, according to a new Aite Group LLC report. Boston-based …

PayPal Holdings Inc. on Wednesday said it has reached an agreement with its former owner, eBay Inc., that calls for PayPal to act as a checkout method on eBay for three years beyond the end of the five-year pact that separated eBay and PayPal in 2015. In that three-year period, …

Payments observers who think Venmo and Square Cash have locked up the Millennial crowd for peer-to-peer payments may have to reconsider. With the new advertising blitz it announced Monday, the bank-owned Zelle service is making it plain it plans to steal its share of this huge consumer market. “The advertising …

In the hotly contested person-to-person payment business, financial institutions have felt left behind by technology impresarios like PayPal Holdings Inc. and Square Inc. that have entered the market over the past few years with slick P2P apps. But on Monday, the banks’ Zelle network released fresh numbers indicating healthy growth …

Zelle on Saturday was set to run the first spots in its initial national mass-media marketing campaign, which is centered on the Tony and Grammy Award-winning actor and rapper Daveed Diggs in an effort to appeal to what the bank-controlled person-to-person payments service calls the “mobile majority” of consumers. The …