The information you need to start your day, from PaymentsSource and around the Web:
Small business matchmaker
Square is collaborating with Bank of Queensland to accelerate small businesses' path to market.
The Australian bank and Square will provide free Square readers for contactless and chip cards, and free processing for the first AU$1,000 in sales, reports
Bank of Queensland and Square positioned the program as a way for entrepreneurs to leave bank branches with both financing and point of sale tools.
Watch the payment
It's now focusing on wearables through a partnership with Mastercard. The collaboration starts with a Mastercard/Garmin Pay rollout in Germany, with six other European countries to follow. Garmin Pay is available on GPS multisport smartwatches.
The card brand and Wirecard will add more products and wearables in the coming months.
Barclays hires former JPMorgan payments exec Cameron
Shortly after hiring Adam Kelleher to bolster data research,
Cameron will be based in London and will head Barclaycard Payment Solutions. At JPMorgan Chase, Cameron was president of Chase Merchant Services Canada and led the acquisition and integration of WePay.
One of the goals of that merger was to integrate payments with the other software that small businesses use,
Token of appreciation
Russian e-payment company
The subsidiary, Qiwi Blockchain Technologies, launched in March to build blockchain technology and provide consulting for token issuance, reports
QST plans to launch its own token that will be pegged to the company's profits, and will be the staff's bonus cryptocurrency.
From the Web
The Motley Fool | Tue July 17, 2018 - People who know Alibaba only as one of China's largest online retailers may be surprised to learn that it has been focusing for the past few years on updating brick-and-mortar stores for the digital era. Its latest move in that direction: incorporating artificial intelligence technology into clothes shopping.
CNBC | Tue July 17, 2018 - Consumers might one day be able to charge their purchases on their credit cards using bitcoin as a currency. On Tuesday, Mastercard won a patent to protect a method that would manage "fractional reserves of blockchain currency."
Fortune | Tue July 17, 2018 - IBM is exploring whether a cryptocurrency pegged to the U.S. dollar may be a better option for making payments than other digital currencies, which tend to be volatile. The computing giant is already a pioneer in business applications for blockchain, using the digital ledger technology that underpins Bitcoin to help companies track their supply chains as well as to make international payments more efficient.
More from PaymentsSource
Contactless card and mobile payments are set to see significant uptake in Australia, already a world leader in contactless card acceptance, as the country starts to implement open transit payments.
Low-value transactions on classified ads aren't generally considered high-risk, and most any payment method would suffice. However, a sense of security and the ability to establish a digital escrow account become critical for high-value sales to consumers and businesses.
A few early adopters — mostly restaurants — have gone cashless, but many merchants have concluded that cash must remain on their menu of payment options.
With Walmart reportedly weighing bids from Capital One alongside incumbent Synchrony Financial to handle its private-label credit card account, Synchrony's use of data and artificial intelligence are more important than ever.
