Visa Inc. is leveraging its sponsorship of the FIFA World Cup to showcase several payments technologies, including contactless payments, facial recognition, and digital card issuance. Visa is deploying 5,300 contactless-enabled payment terminals at official FIFA venues and enabling taxis in Doha, Qatar, capital of the host country, to accept contactless …

SpotOn, a payments-technology provider serving restaurants and retailers, raised $300 million in a Series F funding round led by Dragoneer Investment Group LLC. The round, which comes just eight months after a Series E funding, values the company at $3.6 billion.Sphere, a healthcare payments and security software company, launched a …

To help merchants manage their business through a single device in a rapidly changing payments landscape, Block Inc. on Monday introduced the next generation of Square Stand, the countertop device that converts an iPad into a point-of-sale system. It is the first redesign of Square Stand since its launch in …

At least a couple of banks—Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co.—are proponents of expanding the Zelle peer-to-peer payments service to retail payments, The Wall Street Journal reported. Owned by Early Warning Services LLC, itself owned by seven of the largest U.S. banks including BofA and Wells, Zelle offers account-to-account payments. The …

It may well be, but its effects are very much with us—and are lasting. Two years after it first struck, as the Covid-19 pandemic seemingly winds down, the payments industry is adapting to changes Covid coaxed into place that will stick around a lot longer than the virus that caused …

Full-service restaurants, one of the hardest-hit merchant segments at the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, showed signs of a rebound in 2021, according to research by TouchBistro Inc., a provider of POS and restaurant-management applications. Findings from TouchBistro’s third annual “State of Full-Service Restaurants Report” reveals that 74% of full-service restaurants …

As merchants continue to evolve their business model during the Covid-19 pandemic, they are discovering that consumers want convenience and multiple options when it comes to paying for purchases. While credit cards remain consumers’ preferred method of payment, contactless options are a close second, according to Square Inc.’s second annual “The …

An increase in the limit on what contactless cardholders in the United Kingdom can spend before they are required to authenticate themselves is raising questions about whether the new mandate will prompt consumers to shun their cards in favor of mobile wallets, which have no per transaction limit. The theory is …

The microchip shortage has caught up with POS terminal makers. Now, with forecasts that production won’t meet demand until mid-2022, those makers are for bracing for more pain. Since late 2019, when the incipient Covid-19 pandemic first throttled back or temporarily shut down microchip production in China, manufacturers like mobile …

The story of debit cards in the pandemic year of 2020 turns out to have several chapters—including higher average tickets, a sharp swing to card-not-present usage, a dramatic surge in contactless adoption, and higher mobile-wallet usage. Meanwhile, account-to-account transfers turned out to be the fastest-growing form of debit, though usage …