Payments

Barclays is preparing to merge its wearable mobile payments product BPay with its more popular Pingit app, after it struggled to attract users.

The slow U.S. adoption of real-time payments hurts half of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck, says Aaron Klein, a fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Many fintech startups are working to streamline various aspects of payment acceptance for global online merchants, and Modo wants to give those merchants more control over the payment service processors they use.

The bank-run Zelle P2P network was designed without the social media-esque touches that made Venmo a hit among millennials. And as one might expect, half of all new P2P users are 45 and older.

China dwarfs the U.S. market in e-commerce adoption and is likely to be soon giving lessons to internet executive from U.S. and Western countries.

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.

The move by Kroger Co. comes in response to rising interchange fees on Visa's premium credit cards. The cards will be banned at 142 Smith's stores in the western U.S.

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.

ACI’s $750 million deal to acquire Western Union’s Speedpay allows Western Union to clear its decks while ACI clears its runway.

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.