Kate Fitzgerald

Sometimes an idea is ahead of its time. Many of the most ambitious products in payments and fintech were dismissed as absurd or over-ambitious at the time — only to feel perfectly normal years later as culture and consumer habits evolved.

The hunt for solid credit card customers is driving issuers to try creative new approaches, including digging deeper for good prospects who fall outside the usual parameters of U.S. credit scoring models.

Tightening its connections to restaurants with a brisk delivery business, Square has acquired a longstanding Dallas-based local food delivery service to add to its Caviar food-ordering platform.

Tender Armor, which offers a fraud-prevention tool that requires consumers to enter a special code for each online purchase, has attracted private equity funding to expand its development three years after the company’s inception.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has launched an application programming interface (API) gateway available to third-party fintech providers, as part of preparations for Europe’s PSD2 regulations that went into effect this month.

Developers of mobile point of sale solutions now have a path to build secure applications to support PIN entry on tablets and smartphones, following the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council’s latest update.

A fintech investment surge is underway across Europe. What’s unknown is how the looming Brexit situation may affect the U.K.’s strong fintech momentum, and where exactly funds would flow if talent and startups flee Britain.

Wirecard has introduced a feature that uses payments data to shape marketing offers and loyalty programs in the travel industry.

E-commerce merchants battling fraud that comes from multiple directions often need to use several different solutions that don’t always mesh well, bogging down the checkout process and inadvertently blocking good transactions.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has streamlined its virtual cards so that commercial purchasing clients may connect directly to the bank’s virtual card system and create single-use accounts in real time.

Paytronix Systems has received a $65 million private equity investment from Great Hill Partners to power its development of payment and loyalty systems for restaurants.

Patience could be wearing thin for those awaiting action from the card networks' emerging fraud-prevention protocol known as 3-D Secure 2.0. But after many delays, the technology appears to be awakening from hibernation.

Mastercard is teaming with SIX Payment Services to enable cashless payments at the Hahnenkamm, a top European ski race in Kitzbühel, Austria, to speed up service and eliminate lines.

Shanghai’s mass-transit system this week will begin accepting QR code payments through an app connected to a digital wallet, following a successful pilot.

OnPlan serves the education and health care industries, and under Flywire its services will be available for the first time outside the U.S.

Ingenico Group has agreed to acquire Paymark, a leading payments processor in New Zealand, for about US$140 million.

Ride-hailing and mobile payments company Grab has acquired iKaaz, a Bangalore, India-based payments technology startup, to power its growth in the Southeast Asia region.

As more small businesses hire workers for short-term gigs, Intuit is adding features to QuickBooks to streamline the paperwork around paying these contract employees.

Japanese card network JCB has expanded its acceptance to Belarus for the first time through an agreement with Belinvestbank.

Gift card giant Blackhawk Network will be acquired by the tech investment firm Silver Lake, along with P2 Capital Partners, for $3.5 billion in a move underscoring investor interest in the shift to mobile digital technology, where Blackhawk devoted millions in recent years.