Acquirers

Apple's planned update for accepting contactless payments on its handsets is as disruptive as it is inevitable. Companies like Ingenico, which makes point-of-sale hardware, have strategies in place to build on the tech giant's platform without sidelining their own devices.

Tap to Pay on iPhone turns any of the tech giant's recent smartphones into a card reader, but since Apple doesn't provide its own merchant services, it stops short of becoming a direct threat to acquirers and payment facilitators.

The move could impact payments providers that rely on Apple’s iPhones to facilitate sales, such as Block’s Square, which dominates the market.

JPMorgan Chase's recent purchase of a stake in the Greek fintech will allow the U.S. company to offer new services like merchant credit in Europe, where it is No. 5 among merchant acquirers.

By acquiring First Sound Bank in Seattle, the fintech would control the strategic direction of the combined company and won't have to share revenue, CEO Luvleen Sidhu says.

As payments steadily migrate to cloud-based, digital channels with the rise of mobile e-commerce, Intuit’s QuickBooks unit is augmenting its online payment acceptance options with a mobile payment device that links to its accounting software.

As stores that went online-only start to reopen their physical locations, JPMorgan Chase is looking to bolster its position among European merchants by adding software from ACI Worldwide that's designed to support payments across multiple channels.

FIS is planning to follow the integration of its Worldpay acquisition by adding hundreds of new sales people to bring the combined companies' technology to a wider market.

Fattmerchant is capitalizing on the subscription concept by taking a majority stake in Canadian billing software firm Fusebill, which competes with Chargebee and Chargify in the fast-growing arena of managing subscription revenue for merchants.

Newer partners like the Isreali fintech First are building connections to help stores enroll.