Ever since Ant Financial Services Group let it be known in October that it is working with key payments players like VeriFone Systems Inc. and First Data Corp. to bring its Alipay mobile-payments service to North America, the industry has wondered about the Chinese company’s strategy both in the United …

• Merchant processor Sterling Payment Technologies, a unit of EVO Payments International, has partnered with RPower Point of Sale, a vendor of point-of-sale software for restaurants, to offer an EMV solution for the hospitality industry. • Merchant processor Square Inc. introduced Caviar pickup, a new feature on its Caviar restaurant food-ordering and delivery service that …

In an effort to cement its ties with restaurants, Square Inc. announced Wednesday it is adding a pick-up feature to its Caviar meal-delivery service and has acquired the OrderAhead restaurant pick-up service. Both moves capitalize on the trend time-strapped consumers buying restaurant meals for consumption elsewhere, be it at home or …

• In separate blog posts, PayPal Holdings Inc. executive vice president Bill Ready and chief executive Dan Schulman reported the company has reached 200 million total consumer, merchant, and charity accounts. They also said the PayPal’s One Touch authentication technology has signed up 50 million consumers and more than 5 million merchant accounts, …

In the February, 2017, issue of Digital Transactions, Steve Mott argues that the U.S. EMV migration was a misguided, poorly planned, and poorly executed effort. In his article, “The Great EMV Hangover,” he considers the migration to be a failure, writing, “As 2016 wound to a close, nothing short of …

Mastercard Inc. and Oracle Corp. announced Monday a collaboration that could dramatically expand the reach of Mastercard’s Masterpass digital-wallet technology, as well as the network’s tokenization capability. Masterpass will be embedded into Oracle’s POS systems for retail and hospitality merchants. The companies said Oracle will embed Masterpass in systems it …

• Rambus Inc. introduced its Rambus Unified Payment Platform, which it says will enable mobile-wallet users to pay with credit, points, and coupons in a single transaction. • Payments provider Harbortouch Payments LLC announced a partnership with Strategic Funding Source, a merchant cash-advance provider. • Square Inc. will pay $54.8 million to Starbucks Corp. to cancel …

E-commerce platform provider Shopify Inc. is facing pressure to cut ties with a controversial client, the Breitbart alt-right online news site. On Thursday, activist groups plan to present a petition with 140,000 signatures at Shopify’s Ottawa, Ontario, headquarters, demanding that the processor cut off Breitbart as a client. The news …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews Square Inc.’s stock hit a record high Thursday in the wake of a strong fourth-quarter financial report. Now the merchant processor is looking to an updated point-of-sale system for retailers called

• Puerto Rico-based Evertec Inc. said revenue in its merchant-acquiring unit declined 1% in the fourth quarter to $23.1 million while revenue in its payment-processing segment grew 0.4% to $28.9 million. Evertec announced it has an agreement to buy Chile-based EFT Group S.A., a payment processor and software company that uses the …