After much prognostication regarding when Square would finally announce its IPO, the m-payments service provider began trading this morning on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol SQ.
Funding continues to roll in for fintech startups, with a pair of firms landing investments totaling more than $21 million this week.
The convergence of social media and money transfer has taken another step forward, with China’s biggest mobile messaging app partnering with Western Union to enable users to make cross-border P2P transfers.
The five most important takeaways from Money20/20 that will shape payments for the foreseeable future.
Italian payments company SIA is expanding its P2P service Jiffy into Germany, together with IT firm GFT Technologies. The move is part of SIA’s plan to roll out real time money transfer via mobile phone to 400 million European current account holders.
Apple Pay’s availability continues to slowly cover the globe with the latest addition—Canada. American Express today announced the availability of Apple Pay for cardholders with cards issued by Amex Bank of Canada.
Users of Vodafone’s mobile wallet soon will be able to add their MasterCard-branded payments cards to the wallet app and subsequently make contactless payments via NFC, the European telecom provider announced. Vodafone Wallet added support for Visa-branded payment cards earlier this year and compatibility with Visa- and MasterCard-branded payment cards could help Vodafone Wallet compete against Apple Pay, which launched in the U.K. in July.
In a global battle pitting two companies, Hailo and Uber, that connect drivers with riders, U.K-based Hailo announced this week that all of London’s 22,500 black cabs now accept mobile payments using HailoPay, a payment gateway for passengers to pay for black cab rides using their smartphones.
Samsung Pay grabbed attention in the m-payments race with its technology enabling users to pay with their handsets at any POS terminal, whether or not it accepts NFC. Now reports suggest Samsung Pay may add P2P services.
In Uber’s latest move to expand its services to emerging markets, the San Francisco-based company has formed a partnership with Mumbai-based Paybefore Awards winner ItzCash Card Ltd. to reach unbanked consumers in areas outside India’s major cities.
Mastercard and Cardlytics have formed a new partnership that will streamline the process for banks implementing Cardlytics’ card-linked marketing offers, and ensure that consumers can access offers online and via mobile devices.
Five months after announcing support for retailer loyalty programs, Apple Pay has landed its first merchant loyalty partner. Members of Walgreens’ Balance Rewards loyalty program now are able to integrate their rewards accounts into Apple Pay, using a mobile device to earn and redeem points when making purchases at the pharmacy giant.
Mobile payments technology provider Mobetize Corp. has formed a strategic partnership with prepaid wireless company Global Service Solutions Inc. and under the new brand Gotwallet, the companies “successfully” will bridge the gap between the prepaid wireless end user and mobile payments, according to a Global Services Solution executive.
In the latest example of the global push to speed up payments, Fiserv Inc. and Early Warning, a bank-owned risk management service, today announced a partnership enabling U.S. banks to provide real-time bill payment and deposit services, leveraging the scale of Fiserv’s NOW Network and technology from Early Warning.
Experts have long pointed to loyalty as the key to convincing consumers to adopt mobile wallets.
Amazon is expanding its one-click “Pay with Amazon” feature to third-party mobile apps, capitalizing on the growing popularity of “buy buttons” for mobile commerce.
In a keynote address on Money20/20’s final day, MCX Chief Brian Mooney provided more details about how CurrentC—backed by Chase Pay—will work at the POS for consumers, demonstrating use cases in its current pilot in Columbus, Ohio.
At Money20/20 this week, Phoenix Marketing International released data from a new survey that suggests Apple Pay adoption is still on the rise, but its growth rate has slowed considerably in recent months.
Enacomm, a provider of intelligent customer service solutions, and enterprise and mobile voice authentication company VoiceVault have integrated technologies for the provision of Voice e-Signatures. Showcased during Money20/20, and recently implemented for a financial industry giant that manages billions of dollars in assets, the technology enables identity verification via a phone or smart device for obtaining and storing customer signatures, the companies said.
Chase is not the first U.S. bank to launch a mobile wallet—Capital One secured that position earlier this month. But Chase Pay has snagged a huge partner in MCX and, when launched next year, will create a major alternative network.
Blackhawk Network’s partner gift cards can now be integrated into Samsung Pay, enabling cardholders to manage and spend their gift cards through the mobile wallet.
Cachet Financial Solutions has launched enhancements to its Select Mobile Money prepaid platform with features addressing security and cardholder engagement.
The selfie boom was born in 2003 with the world’s first front-facing camera, and millennials are the first generation to grow up with technology focused on one’s self, bringing new expectations to the meaning of personalized, digital services.
One in three retail banking customers feel their mobile banking app is not as good as online banking through a browser, according to a new study by ecommerce company First Data in the UK. The figures also revealed that more than half still have yet to use a mobile banking app – suggesting that there may be both an unmet demand for more functionality in mobile apps, and a need to convince the remaining consumers of their value.
MasterCard is bolstering security on several fronts, launching tokenization for MasterPass and a new tool to help banks and processors reduce the threat of cyberattacks.
Walmart this week joins major merchants participating in MCX’s CurrentC mobile payments test underway in Columbus, Ohio, with Exxon Mobil and Shell coming soon, the consortium confirms.
Technology has infiltrated every facet of our lives, fundamentally changing our behaviour patterns and our expectations of what constitutes a good customer experience. The banking sector has not been immune to these changes; the industry has been forced to drastically transform its business processes and services in order to keep up with customers’ expectations. Today, customer satisfaction is judged not by the smile on the face of a cashier, but on the speed with which one can gain mobile access
With today’s launch of its Capital One Wallet, Capital One is the first U.S. bank to enter the mobile wallet race. But with 22 million active mobile customers, Chase may not be far behind.
Dan Henry has been mostly quiet since leaving his role as CEO of NetSpend last year, but the payments pioneer has now dipped a toe back into the industry, investing in m-POS provider CardFlight.
Atlanta-based IDology Inc., is augmenting its ammo to battle against fraudsters in the mobile payments and e-commerce channels with a strategic investment in Payfone Inc., combining IDology’s online identity verification and fraud prevention services with Payfone’s mobile security services with a new service, ExpectID Mobile, to verify customers’ identities in the mobile space.
Mobile transactions continue to increase their share of the market, accounting for up to half of online transactions, according to a new report by global payments technology company Adyen.
The recent surge of mobile payments services including Apple Pay, Android Pay and Samsung Pay is impressive, but what’s more significant is that payments-enabled mobile devices are on track to expand tenfold over the next five years, creating major challenges and opportunities for developers of consumer digital wallets, said Matt Barr, MasterCard’s group head, North America, emerging payments, speaking at this week’s NFC Solutions Summit in Phoenix.
There’s never a good time for a data breach, but yesterday it was reported that LoopPay, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., suffered an attack on its network.
Mobile payments’ drive into the fuel station sector continues, with Visa Inc. announcing a new NFC pilot at more than 20 Chevron stations around San Francisco and Silicon Valley.
The rise of mobile and contactless payments technology caused non-cash payment volumes to soar last year, surpassing the growth rate of GDP in all worldwide regions, according to a new report from Capgemini and the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Mobile payments development has exploded with the arrival of Apple Pay, Android Pay and Samsung Pay, but it will take “organic demand” from consumers to drive broad adoption of mobile wallets, according to payments experts speaking at PayThink last week in Las Vegas.
Green Dot Corp. sees continued strong demand for the mobile features of its iconic prepaid card and its GoBank checking account. And though the company hasn’t embraced Apple Pay or Android Pay, adding mobile payments access is on the company’s horizon, Steve Streit, Green Dot’s CEO, told attendees at PayThink in Las Vegas today.
London-based fintech startup Kerv has turned to crowd-funding site Kickstarter to raise mass-production capital to enter the field of wearables with an NFC-enabled ring that allows consumers to make contactless payments. The Kickstarter campaign launched Friday in an effort to raise nearly $117,000 and as of this morning, the company already has raised more than $52,000.
Voice-based user authentication systems are vulnerable to “voice impersonation attacks,” where criminals gain access to a sample of a user’s voice and use that sample to build a model of the user’s speech pattern with voice-morphing software, University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers say.
Square Inc. may be getting ready to file an initial public offering within the next two weeks, according to a report in Fortune magazine, adding weight to rumors going back more than two years about the m-POS company’s desire to go public.
