Merchant

While the battle for the consumer’s coffee or tea beverage, both hot and cold, is increasingly moving in a mobile direction, the challenge remains as to whether Dunkin’s recent moves are enough for it to succeed against Starbucks.

David Mangum will be leaving his post as president and chief operating officer of Global Payments, an announcement that came on the same day it inked deals to retain other top execs, including CEO Jeff Sloan.

The USAmeriBank deal was supposed to give Valley National Bancorp a bigger presence in Florida, but it did more than that — it provided a model for banking businesswomen that Valley can copy in its New York and New Jersey markets.

For the past year, select Google advertisers have had access to a potent new tool to track whether the ads they ran online led to a sale at a physical store in the U.S. That insight came thanks in part to a stockpile of Mastercard transactions that Google paid for.

The new optimism is fueled by rising standards of living, increases in smartphone usage and cheap data plans that are boosting internet penetration across the nation. Perhaps most important, India is the last big retail market still up for grabs, with an internet economy projected to double to $250 billion by 2020.

New Merchant Advisory Group chief John Drechny will push open standards for payments acceptance and security technology that doesn't impact customer experience.

Nedbank Money users can store payment card data in just one app for all the main South African scan-to-pay schemes, representing a combined footprint of over 100,000 retail points of presence and 800 billers.

There is space for banks to enter a market they largely ignore, according to William Phelan, president of PayNet.

The Lightning Connector eliminates the need for merchants using the Square Reader to rely on a 3.5mm headphone jack of a smartphone or tablet to operate with its mobile app.

Everything's in place for mobile payments to supplant plastic cards in the U.S. — except for a compelling reason for the transition.