P-to-P payments

MyECheck has reached an agreement to buy the electronic payment software platform developer Seergate.

As their financial lives have become more digital, consumers have embraced technology like online bill pay and mobile check deposit.

Person-to-person payment services haven't always fared well, but a year-old French startup, Flooz, thinks a P2P app can succeed in its home country if it has the right interface — and steep social barrier to entry.

The field of P2P competitors has grown significantly since JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo founded clearXchange LLC in 2011, and the mega-banks' initiative still looks very much like it did three years ago.

Snapchat, a photo-based messaging service, has added a payment capability based on Square Cash, Square Inc.'s person-to-person payment system.

Venmo, a mobile person-to-person payment system now owned by PayPal, rocketed in popularity with millennials by treating money movement as a type of social interaction.

Amazon plans to discontinue WebPay, a service that allows people to send cash to each other.

Square Cash, a person-to-person payment service Square launched in October 2013, has been redesigned to become more useful as an app-based product.

Fiserv Inc. is promoting the real-time version Popmoney person-to-person payment service as a companion to its online bill payment offering.

Bank of America Corp. plans to allow new transaction types, such as corporate disbursements, to be made through the bank-led clearXchange person-to-person payments network.

U.S. Bank's addition of "instant" person to person payments is a response to consumer expectations: If mobile payments are supposed to replace cash, they should be as fast as cash.

U.S. Bank will enable real-time person-to-person payments through Fiserv's Popmoney.

MoneyGram is working with PicomoPay to enable U.S.-based Facebook users to send funds to MoneyGram agent locations in 200 countries using PicomoPay's Facebook app.

Facebook is reportedly close to obtaining a license to operate as an electronic money institution in Ireland, a move that builds on the company's years of experience handling payments on its home turf.

Digital person-to-person payments, also known as social payments, have proliferated in the last few years, with the often-heard promise of providing an easier and faster way to split the dinner check.

Clinkle Corp., a San Francisco startup that specializes in mobile transactions, has appointed Josh Brewer as its vice president of design.

Payments innovation comes quickly, and often from outside the banking industry, leading Associated Bank to create a special procedure to monitor the tech market and customer preferences.

Capital One has joined clearXchange, providing a flood of new potential end users to the bank-led person-to-person payments initiative.

Bangkok Bank Public Co. Ltd. hopes to take advantage of Thailand's easy financial infrastructure to enable a number of new payment options, such as cross-institutional person-to-person payments made from a mobile phone or an ATM.

Square Inc. has introduced a new feature to its Square Cash person-to-person payment system, allowing users to request payments from a group of people or an individual.