Continuing its strategy of enabling application developers to connect to its platform faster, Dwolla Inc. on Tuesday announced the addition of two new drop-in components. The first new component, called Create Beneficial Owners, enables developers to streamline the collection of information required by payments companies for verification of the accounts …

American Express Co. said its Kabbage unit now offers Kabbage Checking to U.S. small businesses. AmEx also said it now offers Kabbage Funding to small businesses with lines of credit ranging from $1,000 to $150,000.Global Payments Inc. has launched a point-of-sale application that operates on commercially-available, off-the-shelf mobile phones, reported The Paypers …

Payments provider Adyen NV announced the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has approved the company’s application for a federal foreign branch in San Francisco. The Federal Reserve granted its approval in May. Adyen says the U.S. branch license will allow its single platform to scale and introduce more services for …

Buy now, pay later provider Uplift Inc. said its service has been integrated with Vegas.com, a travel site.In related news, buy now, pay later provider Splitit said its service is now available on the ChargeAfter platform, which offers merchants a variety of consumer financing methods.Mastercard Inc. said it has closed on its $850-million acquisition of Ekata …

Point-of-sale developer SpotOn introduced SpotOn Sidekick, a handheld POS-acceptance device designed specifically for food trucks, pop-up dining, cafes, and other mobile food kitchens. Pricing was not disclosed.Visa Inc. said banking giant Goldman Sachs will deploy Visa’s B2B Connect and Visa Direct Payouts platforms to speed cross-border business-to-consumer and business-to-business payments for Goldman client …

From a merchant perspective, one of the most harmful features of today’s card networks is default pricing. One merchant advocate succinctly described the anti-competitive impact of default pricing, stating, “with default pricing, banks have no incentive to compete for merchants’ business.”  Today, individual merchants are forced to face off against …

Payments provider Fintainium said it is working with Visa Inc.’s real-time push-payment network, Visa Direct, and CIT Inc. to let merchants access cash flow and consumers receive payouts.Progressive Care Inc. said its PharmCoRx pharmacies is accepting Bitcoin in payment for Covid-19 rapid-testing services. The company began accepting cryptocurrency in 2018.ParkMobile LLC said its mobile app is …

A brief thought experiment illustrates the benefits—and risks—of breaking up the dominant network duo. Bank card networks Mastercard and Visa were the 20th century’s greatest payments innovation. Today, there’s a worldwide competitive patchwork of hundreds of “card” networks and alternative payment systems. But Mastercard and Visa are the only two …

With less face-to-face sales in 2020, merchant acquirers quickly adapted to other selling methods. Some of these methods will stick around. The Covid-19 pandemic has become known as the catalyst that gave contactless payments the adoption rate it once struggled to achieve. Now, a similar transformation appears to have happened …

Libra—er, sorry, Diem—is coming home to the United States, a bit bruised but also a bit wiser than when it left. Bruised but unbowed, the Facebook-inspired blockchain initiative announced in May it is quitting Switzerland and linking up with La Jolla, Calif.-based Silvergate Bank as it plots the next stage …