Suddenly, person-to-person payments services are gaining utility beyond just paying a person via a smart phone. What gives? So you thought these newfangled person-to-person payment services were meant only to replace cash with smart-phone apps that enable individuals to send and receive money electronically? Think again. All of a sudden, …

The first Bitcoin futures contracts began trading at 6 p.m. Eastern Time Sunday and almost right away the volume of activity crashed a Web site operated by the exchange, Cboe Global Markets Inc. After an initial run up, Bitcoin was trading around $16,500 by 10 a.m. Monday. A rival exchange, …

Discover Financial Services could find itself in the catbird’s seat if Apple Inc.’s new Apple Pay Cash person-to-person payment service gains popularity as a way to pay merchants. In addition to its main P2P function, Apple Pay Cash is accepted at any merchant location that accepts Apple’s 3-year-old Apple Pay …

Apple Inc. on Monday officially entered an increasingly crowded arena of players looking to carve out a share of the market for person-to-person payments. Apple Pay Cash, which the Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant first announced six months ago, went live following the release of iOS 11.2, Apple’s latest operating-system update …

So far, nobody is making any money betting on Bitcoin to crash. The digital currency on Sunday soared past the $9,000 mark just five days after hitting $8,000 for the first time, and the $10,000 level could be in sight as early as later Monday, according to Coindesk, an online …

Micro-investing site Acorns has integrated its service with PayPal Holdings Inc., allowing select PayPal account holders to access their Acorn accounts through PayPal. The service will be expanded to all U.S. PayPal account holders starting early in 2018. Voice-marketing firm Invoca released a report called “The Rise of Voice” that …

For the last four years, Square Cash has been a popular person-to-person payment app, but now Square Inc. is adding another function: buying and selling Bitcoin. The San Francisco payments company is testing the new feature with an undisclosed number of Square Cash users, according to the company and users’ …

ShopKeep, a provider of tablet-based point-of-sale equipment and services, announced an integration with online-information management service Yext Inc. The integration will allow ShopKeep clients to check and modify information about their businesses across platforms like Google, Apple, Facebook, Bing, and Yahoo. Point-of-sale terminal maker Ingenico Group released the Moby/8500 mobile …

Private-equity firm Thoma Bravo LLC announced it plans to acquire ABC Financial Services Inc., an independent sales organization and software company serving more than 6,700 health clubs in North America and Europe. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close by year’s end, were not disclosed. Morgan Stanley Wealth …

Square Inc. is still losing money, but less so, and the company made it clear Wednesday its sights are firmly fixed on selling its products and services to larger merchants. “We’re not just about micro-merchants,” chief financial officer Sarah Friar told equity analysts in a conference call to discuss the …