We list 37 entries this year, of which only three appeared in our original Guide nine years ago. This year’s Field Guide represents our 10th annual effort to catalog the broad currents in electronic payments by listing some of the more salient players providing alternatives to the big network brands. …

Since its founding nine years ago, Square Inc. has focused on simplified checkout options and software for small brick-and-mortar merchants. With its acquisition of Weebly Inc., announced late Thursday, San Francisco-based Square is not only staging a major expansion into e-commerce, it’s also laying the groundwork for a significant outreach …

Prepaid card and payments specialist InComm announced it is adding 150 jobs and investing more than $20 million in the Atlanta and Columbus, Ga., areas. The moves follow its acquisition of the distribution rights to American Express Co.’s reloadable and gift card products, and the purchase of the AmEx Serve platform. …

POS equipment maker Ingenico Group said KFC Corp., a unit of Yum! Brands Inc., migrated its U.S. payment system to Ingenico’s Telium semi-integrated POS service. Consumers now can make chip-and-sign, chip-and-PIN, magnetic-stripe, and contactless transactions at KFC locations. Online shopping-cart provider 3dcart said its upcoming version 8.1 will support Google …

Point-of-sale software maker GiftLogic said its product now supports the Ingenico iCMP wireless POS terminal with Vantiv Integrated Payments. Prepaid and gift-card specialist Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. said it will supply the gift card products for Wells Fargo’s Go Far Rewards program. Blackhawk is managing the gift card reward element …

No other bidders emerged during a so-called go-shop period that expired earlier this month, so Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. reported Tuesday that its planned $3.5 billion buyout by two investment firms remains on track to close at mid-year. The Pleasanton, Calif.-based provider of gift cards and other prepaid card services …

Fresquez Companies, operator of nine restaurants at the Albuquerque International Sunport airport, announced it is replacing its vending machines with unattended kiosks for food and other products that use weight-sensing shelves from ShelfX Inc. to determine a consumer’s product selection. Consumers swipe a payment card to unlock the kiosk. Payment …

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 …

A series of partnerships with the card networks and now individual banks have positioned the online-checkout kingpin to make the leap to a mainstream digital-payments platform. Ever since PayPal Holdings Inc. was spun off from eBay Inc. in 2015, its chief executive, Dan Schulman, has not been shy about warning …

Financial-services providers experienced a 105% increase in the fraudster attack rate from 2015 through 2017, reports ThreatMetrix Inc., an authentication and fraud-mitigation provider, in its “Cybercrime Report 2017: A Year in Review,” released on Tuesday. E-commerce merchants, too, experienced greater fraud, with the log-in attack rate growing by 170% from …