Bailey Reutzel

High end fashion retailer Guess is working with MicroStrategy Inc., which has been in data analytics for more than 20 years, to use MicroStrategy's Alert app to track and reward users.

Walgreen Co. plans to expand the payments features of its combined loyalty and prepaid MasterCard, Balance Financial, with the goal of making it the preferred financial product of its underbanked customers.

Linking loyalty to payment cards, especially through cobranded products, is a relatively new practice that retailers say helps them target offers to their best customers.

SmartMetric Inc. is launching a Bitcoin card protected with biometric fingerprint authentication. The card can be used as offline storage for bitcoins, but in the future it might also be used for payment.

Petrosoft, a business software provider, is offering quick service retailers and their customers new products to streamline the point of sale experience.

PulseWallet, a biometrics payments provider, is again touting its payment and authentication device, but it must overcome a sudden emergence of competitors that is also trying to breathe life into an idea that has had spotty success in the market.

SCVNGR's LevelUp expected merchants would prefer its Interchange Zero pricing for mobile payments, but many clients told the company they would prefer to pay a 2% transaction fee.

AJB Software Design Inc. has helped J. Crew, an American specialty retailer, integrate EMV-chip card acceptance into its stores in Canada. And with the EMV migration deadline approaching in the U.S., the middleware provider expects more business.

A pair of companies has launched services on Twitter that allow users to transact in Bitcoin across the microblogging site. And while Twitter has been selective of what companies facilitate payments in the past, the social networking giant hasn't yet touched these Bitcoin services.

DoubleBeam, a white-label payments provider, has started the New Year working to fix a bug that crashed the reporting server used by GoPago, which DoubleBeam purchased last month.

While most gift cards are still made of plastic, digital cards are increasing in popularity among consumers because of the many options to customize the cards.

Chirpify founder and CEO Chris Teso's five o'clock shadow and plaid shirt identify him as one of the new breed of payments entrepreneurs. His advice to newcomers: be fearless.

Under Fincen's March 2013 guidance, companies that transmit virtual currency must register as money services businesses. De Castro was unsure whether his investment company would be treated the same way. According to the letter from Fincen, its rules are not meant to apply to De Castro's business.

Synqera treats its home turf of Russia as a proving ground for new point of sale technology, but it has global ambitions.

DoubleBeam, a white-label payments provider, plans to offer a complete mobile commerce platform for both its online and brick-and-mortar merchant customers through its December purchase of GoPago.

Even though nonbanks seem to be taking the lead in the mobile wallet race, U.S. consumers still put more trust in banks to protect their money.

TipperCoin is attempting to combine two concepts that have faced strong headwinds in the past year: digital currency and Twitter-based payments.

Bitcoin may get the most attention, but several merchants are beginning to accept a digital currency called Litecoin, the second largest digital currency by market capitalization.

Small Business Payments Co. recently launched its WorkBench cash management platform, allowing businesses to make credit card and e-check payments, with other features planned for the future.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the country's central bank, has decided not to interfere with transactions made in the digital currency.