Loyalty and rewards

Prepaid card and payments technology company InComm has acquired Meridian Loyalty, a full-service incentives business that caters to corporations.

These programs are allowed in a majority of states, but only a small portion of credit unions offer them. That may change as the need for deposits grows and consumer expectations shift.

H&M will enable Klarna as a payment option in its 580 U.S. stores beginning this fall, building on a partnership the two Swedish companies established last year.

As blockchain use cases grow, retailers are seeing more reasons to use the distributed ledger technology for payments.

Citigroup will be the first major issuer to use Mastercard technology to give U.S. credit card holders the ability to instantly redeem points on eligible purchases online and through a mobile app.

Hackers are flocking to loyalty and rewards programs, pushing marketers to embed extra fraud technology to stem financial losses.

Coffee and doughnut shops such as Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts and Krispy Kreme have been at the forefront of mobile payments, and this technology could soon develop into a completely cashierless experience.

Petal's getting aggressive with its incentive marketing by approaching consumers with limited credit histories, and it's betting artificial intelligence can handle the higher risk.

A crypto-based payments system from Facebook would create more competition and pressure legacy companies to up their game, says Eric Grover, a principal at Intrepid Ventures.

After quiet experiments, Citigroup is expanding perks designed for credit cards to encourage sales of other banking products.

To fuel growth, Apple's mobile wallet needs to go beyond its core use cases of NFC and in-app payments. Apple Pay's latest project leans more heavily on NFC to do work typically handled by apps.

Apple Card's advantages are mostly available elsewhere, but Apple's marketing prowess will make it a formidable competitor, according to Jonathan Ebinger, a general partner at Blue Run Ventures.

Paytronix has spent the last few years developing a streamlined enrollment process for restaurants’ loyalty programs, but it relies on something relatively few consumers use: Apple Pay and Google Pay at the point of sale.

Mastercard’s real-time incentive marketing initiative is an acknowledgement that requiring consumers to take action to seize a special deal won’t work as well in the mobile age.

Traditional U.S. retail is in crisis at the hands of e-commerce. Bankers have a role to play to stop the bleeding through a combination of service, incentives, and payments technology.

Amazon’s incursion into brick and mortar has been aggressive, but not without its share of course corrections. The latest is a new round of price cuts at Whole Foods amid whispers of slow Prime traffic at the high-end grocer.

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The U.K. prepaid gift card market is experiencing strong growth among consumers who buy them as gifts and for self-use, as well as among businesses that purchase them for customer loyalty programs and as employee incentives.

Beyond Apple’s glitzy product rollouts this week, the tech giant quietly notified users of new policies and a fee to Apple Pay Cash, the account in which the Apple Card deposits rewards.

A new feature from the microinvesting app Stash allows users to accumulate free stock in the companies where they spend money.