Kate Fitzgerald

Florida startup GRUBBRR, whose software enables restaurants to add touchscreen ordering and payment, has teamed with payment platform provider FreedomPay to speed the rollout of its services.

Payments technology conglomerate WEX has agreed to buy two companies — B2B travel payment operator eNett and B2B payment specialist Optal — for $1.7 billion.

Tink, a Swedish fintech that developed an open banking platform used by 2,500 European banks, has secured $100 million in funding from various investors.

Plaid may be a more problematic acquisition than Visa made it out to be. But without Visa, those problems were likely to get a lot worse.

Fearful of being the last one standing, banks and credit unions of all sizes will become more aggressive about real-time payments — or risk getting left in the past.

Shopify has provided merchant cash advance services for the last three years for established online retailers, but newcomers with no transaction history typically were turned away.

The recent explosion of online shopping tools pointing users to the lowest prices for items — particularly on Amazon — appears to be making the e-commerce giant nervous.

Comerica will continue to handle the U.S. Treasury’s Direct Express prepaid card program, beating out other banks for the third time since the program launched in 2008, despite a high-profile glitch in 2018 that drew lawmakers’ scrutiny.

One of the biggest untapped areas of payment innovation is in consumer bill payment, which makes up 30% of U.S. consumer spending, with banks currently playing a shrinking role in the $4 trillion segment.

In its proposal to obtain one of the full digital banking licenses Singapore will award later this year, online gaming company Razer has laid out the gaps between what traditional banks offer and young adults need.

Pakistan’s central government is using its post offices to follow through on an initiative to ease electronic funds movement for remote workers sending money home.

Targeting about 1.5 million Canadians who routinely visit the U.S. for extended periods — especially during the winter — TD Bank is collaborating with Visa to enable debit push payments for easier cross-border funds movement.

Mastercard is working to build its risk-monitoring arsenal by buying RiskRecon, which offers tools measuring threats introduced by third parties, including vendors.

PNC Bank has made it more difficult for its customers to use Venmo, and although competition plays a role, the bigger issue is the expanding risks financial institutions face when sharing data with third parties.

Tokyo-based credit card brand JCB faces a domestic battle to automate Japanese B2B payments that remain mired in old-school cash and paper, while it also tries to grow an international e-commerce network. It's a diverse set of challenges that have led the company to bring on a pair of technology partners.

The San Francisco-based Ripple, which launched in 2012, will use the funding to add personnel to its global organization and enrich its services that power payments using blockchain technology with its XRP platform.

Payrailz, a payments startup launched that leverages AI to streamline bill payments and money transfers, will integrate its platform with Mastercard Bill Pay Exchange to explore ways to enhance the consumer bill payment experience.

Gift cards will be the most-requested item this holiday season again, and for the first time, one in three U.S. consumers buying gift cards will opt for digital versions, opening new possibilities for merchants that are anxious to counter Amazon's influence and improve user experience for stored value.

MFS Africa has spent the last decade building an interoperable mobile payments system linking millions of consumers in Africa, and now it’s formed a partnership with Visa to extend global card acceptance to its users.

In the four years since Nets set up a laboratory at its Copenhagen headquarters to test new approaches to payments, it’s learned that consumer response to biometric payments technology such as finger-vein checkout is nearly impossible to predict.