Point-of-sale

Despite years of advancements in mobile and online payments, the physical point of sale remains still ripe for disruption.

The year saw anxiety over how banks would respond to record consumer debt, disruptive glitches at TD Bank and SunTrust, ongoing scandal at Wells Fargo, and much, much more.

Hostilities toward the legal U.S. cannabis industry are softening considerably, with signs of further removing cash and digital workarounds from a market that has long been shunned by traditional payment cards.

Regulatory and demographic shifts have altered the path to credit for younger American consumers. Those shifts have opened up lending opportunities, particularly at the digital point of sale. Merchants, startups and financial institutions are all vying for a share of this (potentially very) lucrative business.

KKR, which has a substantial financial services portfolio, has made a $75 million equity investment in Cross River Bank, part of an overall $100 million capital raise. Cross River will use the funds to expand the technology and compliance infrastructure that it provides to fintech organizations.

A shopping experience so easy that you feel like you’re shoplifting may be appealing, but it also raises privacy concerns, writes Peter Zaborszky, founder of BestVPN.com

As consumers adopt mobile wallets or in-app payments, it leaves some acquirers and merchants struggling to keep up — especially if their current point-of-sale systems struggle to handle multiple software programs and apps.

Walmart, Tractor Supply and Home Depot are among the retailers using cashierless checkout ad local sourcing to tailor services for specific communities, according to Marc Gorlin, CEO and founder of Roadie.

Installment plans have helped shoppers afford large purchases since the late 19th century and are still available for pricey items like cars and smartphones. But to delay payment for a T-shirt and a couple pairs of jeans, you needed a credit card. Now several fintech startups are putting smaller purchases on installment, too.

There's never a good time to expose customer data, but the incident Amazon disclosed Wednesday could upend two major events: Black Friday/Cyber Monday and a reported effort to get merchants to accept Amazon at the point of sale.

Part of the issue is that in the U.S., contactless cards didn't pave the way for mobile as they did in other regions. Without widespread acceptance of contactless cards, merchants were put in the position of being asked to upgrade their terminals for mobile without any promise that the investment would pay off.

Standard Cognition raised $40 million in a Series A funding round among five different venture capitalists to expand its cashierless checkout footprint.

U.S. restaurants for years have been experimenting with novel EMV payment approaches ranging from tablets to apps, but two major U.S. restaurant chains are opting for basic hand-held terminals from Ingenico.

As companies mature out of their startup phase, their sales growth curves begin to flatten and costs start to rise — unless, of course, they change their business model. And that’s exactly what Square is doing to maintain its startup-style growth.

The Atlanta-based consumer lender, which partners with both retailers and banks, cited a higher-than-expected cost of funds as one reason for its less rosy forecast.

France-based Ingenico has named a new CEO a month after receiving an unsolicited takeover bid, signaling a strategy shift in the face of increasing pressure on the last of the independent payment terminal hardware giants.

Bank of America Merchant Services is combining its payment processing and security services with the cloud-based restaurant management software of talech to deliver a new point-of-sale option to restaurants and bars.

NCR has turned to the acquisition market to shore up its defenses against fintech challengers, a further signal that longtime retail industry staples such as payment hardware and ISOs are going by the wayside as dedicated business models.

Transaction Network Services has agreed to acquire Australia-based Advam in a move to strengthen the company's services, especially in the unattended payments and e-commerce fields.

The fintech wave has nearly devoured the entire point of sale industry, as lone major holdout Ingenico weighs an unsolicited bid from an investment bank’s payments group.