Loyalty and rewards

Under the hood of U.S. Bank's new mobile app; BofA, Wells Fargo sour on blockchain; are Fannie and Freddie too big?; and more from this week's most-read stories.

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.

Traditional loyalty programs provide customers with tangible benefits, such as a free item with purchase or a reward for return visits. But these are limited in reach, argues James Roedding, vice president of product and data Rewards Network.

The new Apple Card wasn't just one product of many announced at the Steve Jobs Theater on Monday — it was the glue that binds all of Apple's new services together.

Agency concerned about the number of "risky" mortgages being approved; Brian Kelly, who runs The Points Guy website, can determine if a card succeeds or fails.

Blockchain technology provider Yosemite X is following the spirit of the mega-retailers' disbanded Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) joint retailer venture, but on a local level.

Attracting surprisingly technology-savvy older consumers is a lucrative—and surprisingly easy—goal for online retailers, as long as payments fraud protection is solid and understantable, argues Monica Eaton-Cardone, co-founder and CEO of Chargebacks911.

Mastercard and Lazada, an Alibaba affiliate, have joined forces to collaborate on e-commerce systems for developing markets in the Southeast Asia region.

The rewards card offered by the fintech Stash will let users accumulate stock of companies at which they frequently shop. The company said Tuesday that it has raised $65 million from investors and will offer the card in partnership with Green Dot.

Shubhi Rao is not the kind of person who looks to back down from a challenge. In deciding where she wanted to spend her career she did something no woman in her family had done before.

Barclays is partnering with digital rewards companies as part of its focus on investing in fintech and developing new business models. Its recent investment in Bink, a U.K.-based loyalty platform provider, marks the fourth company in this field that Barclays has partnered with.

Barclays plc has spent years experimenting with creative ways to promote mobile payments, and it's not showing signs of stopping.

Through its acquisition of digital payments and fundraising provider Benefit Mobile, the National Gift Card company is positioning itself to help charitable organizations grow and to strengthen the mobile offerings of retail merchants.

Consumers are willing to pay a bit more for repeat business at a merchant. By passing these fees on to shoppers, small retailers no longer have to cut vital operational costs to accommodate for lower margins from loyalty programs, says Robert Maynard, the founder of SurchX.

Thailand’s Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) is launching its first credit card through Japan’s expanding JCB card network, targeting young adults who like to travel throughout Asia.

One solution would be to move to infrastructures where card issuers can share the cost of offering rewards with the retailers — making it a win-win-win situation, according to Mehmet Sezgin, CEO and founder of myGini.

Game day is a big day not just for athletes — anyone who sells pizza, chicken wings and beer will also win big if they have the capacity to handle all of the orders that come in. Many are turning to mobile and online technology to increase sales and remove friction from the payment process.

Often considered a rival to mass transit, Uber is inching closer to public transportation by embedding Denver's system for routes within its app, with the capability to purchase and use tickets coming soon.