Alternative acquirers

Merchants with multiple Square accounts will have a new app designed to help analyze business data and trends through Square's partnership with business management company Domo.

Now that the big, multi-billion dollar payment deals of the past year have closed, the companies must figure out how their new scale can address tasks such as software migrations or data sharing compliance in specific markets.

The major technology companies that have chipped away at incumbent payment businesses face much larger competition from this year’s big processing mergers, but they’ve also bulked up through fundraising and product development.

Stripe and JPMorgan Chase are firing rapid shots in their battle to win businesses, with faster payments as the centerpiece of their offerings.

Square's working to boost its appeal to third-party developers, especially as a growing number of competitors and broader economic challenges loom on the horizon.

Square has worked hard in the past several years to offer more than just mobile card acceptance, but not all of its efforts have paid off.

The mobile point of sale market has grown far beyond its roots as an off-the-shelf dongle for smartphones. The category is now driving major acquisitions, collaborations and international deployments.

Small business owners using Square's payments platform and business tools may soon be asking "Elle" for assistance with customers.

In the wake of Zelle, Venmo and Apple Cash getting more active users and potential revenue, Square is relying on its Square Cash App and Cash Card as key drivers for its own growth.

Payments software provider SpotOn Transact is partnering with terminal maker Poynt to provide loyalty, marketing and point-of-sale services in a new terminal for small and medium-size businesses.

Square's new card for business owners does something very bold with debit — and very troubling for banks.

Square just found a replacement for high-profile CFO Sarah Friar but is facing another big hole in its leadership team as head of payments Mary Kay Bowman leaves for Visa.

Ant Financial, Alibaba’s finance affiliate controlled by billionaire Jack Ma, agreed to buy a stake in the Brazilian payments firm StoneCo Ltd after the company prices its initial public offering, joining Warren Buffett in investing in Brazil’s booming financial-technology startup landscape.

Square’s growth strategy has always been to aim higher with products and services that benefit larger businesses than the ones it originally targeted with its mobile card reader. Its newest product diverges from that path.

For their own sake, GrubHub and Uber should have purchased Caviar when Square reportedly offered it to them for sale in 2016. Instead, they now have a competitor who’s looking to eat their lunch in the restaurant delivery business.

Pinduoduo's controversial IPO was seemingly a world removed from western merchant acquirers, but it's yet another example of how social payments can upend conventional relationships between merchants, shopping and payment processing.

Seeing an opportunity to address the multi-billion dollar cannabis industry’s needs for payments processings, Zodaka is launching with a system that focuses more on price than process.

The money flowing into alternative merchant acquiring is feeding an arms race, with each new deal adding pressure to become an automated one-stop shop for small businesses.

Merchant acquirers have moved mountains to embrace software and e-commerce over the old model of selling point of sale hardware, but there are signs that transformation is not enough to please investors.

Ingenico is negotiating a business combination with BS Payone that would boost its profile in parts of central Europe and allow it to counter multichannel moves by other major payment companies.