Trends Of The Week

Over the past week, PYMNTS.com’s brief’s coverage in this newsletter has spanned a broad variety of issues. In this column, we take a look at five common elements that link many of those stories, in essence making them the “trends of the week.”

Commerce/eCommerce

Wayfair, an e-retailer for home furnishings that also operates several other eCommerce sites, is gunning for $350 million in its upcoming IPO. Click here more about the company’s plans once it goes public.

Dollar General is offering $8.9 billion for Family Dollar, beating out an earlier offer of $8.5 billion from Dollar Tree. Click here to learn more about what Dollar General’s chief sees in the discount merchant.

PayPal has unveiled a mobile app feature that lets shoppers pay with a single touch to their screens. Click here to learn more about the technology and the vendor behind it.

Macy’s is putting its money where its intentions are, and throwing its $1 billion-plus annual CapEx budget to building its infrastructure to fulfill a variety of consumer demands. Click here to learn more about the retailer’s omnichannel plans.

The rumors of an impending PayPal spin-off from eBay returned this week. Click here to learn why eBay might part with its ePayments unit.

Amazon is boosting its presence in China by setting up shop in Shanghai’s free trade zone. Click here for how this ties in with Amazon’s efforts to enter the Chinese market.

Delivery/Transport

An FAA ruling formally banned pilots from publicly offering up seats on their planes in return for gas funds, a model that flight-sharing startups AirPooler and Flytenow use. Click here to learn more about what the FAA is trying to protect.

Uber is partnering with Bellhops to test a moving service for students. Click here to find out where the test is occurring and what they intend to charge.

Uber also has added on-demand pick and delivery, or at least it’s testing the concept. Click here to understand better the logic behind the “Corner Store” initiative.

Ryanair plans to enable air passengers to purchase tickets with PayPal. Click here to learn what PayPal had to say about the new customer.

Alibaba and Tencent, China’s two biggest Internet companies, have called a truce in their six-month war to capture customers for their respective taxi-hailing apps. Click here to find out how much their little battle has cost them.

Uber officially rolled out its API along with a list of 11 launch partners, including Expensify, Hinge, Hyatt Hotels & Resorts. Click here to find out who else is on board.

Start-up Madison Reed is launching an Uber-like app that will allow users to order a hair stylist for a hair-care house call. Click here to learn how the strategy is set to work.

Merchant Acquiring

Heartland Payment Systems acquired 100 percent of mPOS tablet maker Leaf, a company in which it earlier was an investor. Click here to learn what complete ownership will give the processor.

Mobile POS startup SumUp earned more than $10 million in a Series C financing round. Click here to find out what the Square competitor intends to do with the funds.

Square Inc., meanwhile, secured its own, unspecified investment from Victory Park Capital. Click here to learn how its plans to use the money to beef up its Square Capital small-business financing program.

Square says it will not require retailers to buy a new version of its Square Stand point-of-sale hardware for next year’s U.S. transition to supporting EMV chip-and-PIN cards. Click here to learn what customers can do instead.

It was a busy week for Square, which also rolled out Square Analytics, an analytics tool designed to further attempt to level the playing field for small and medium sized businesses. Click here for the details.

Mobile/Beacons

Polish beacon vendor Ifinity secured an investment deal valued at $12 million. What are the company’s for the money? Click here to find out.

Digital offers destination RetailMeNot reportedly has a back-to-school marketing campaign that will leverage geofencing technology. It’s taking certain precautions, however. Learn more about what they are by clicking here.

A new poll by ID security firm Intercede finds that the people have spoken, but it is not in favor of mobile banking or shopping. Click here to learn more about what consumers concerns are.

Kenya’s m-Pesa handles $18 billion in transactions annually. Now banks in that country want a piece of the action. Click here to learn what they’re doing to make that so and here to learn about how one bank intends to compete based on price.

Westfield Labs, the technological branch of the Westfield Group shopping center firm, has created “Dine on Time,” a mobile app that lets users skip the pesky mall lines and order their fast food through their phone. Click here to find out who Westfield’s target audience is.

Out of tens of millions of ad views measured, the new Amazon phone accounted for 0.02 percent of that ad traffic during the first 20 days it was on sale. Click here to learn how that rate compares with other new smartphones.

Security

Oberthur Technologies signed an agreement to acquire NagraID Security SA. Click here to learn more about what Oberthur gains from the deal.

MasterCard is rolling out a token service to help improve transaction security. Click here to find out how much is will cost to use.

Jobs on banks’ anti-money laundering teams are on the rise. Click here to find out by how much and what penalties banks face that are driving the increased attention.

Online movie-ticket vendor Fandango and credit-report site Credit Karma face 20 years of security assessments. Click here to find out what prompted the penalty from the Federal Trade Commission.

It’s no secret that far too many online businesses cut security corners. Click here to learn more about a website specifically designed to embarrass and shame such activities.

Ingenico Group, FreedomPay and ScanSource Inc. are launching a PCI-friendly point-to-point encryption (P2PE) payment option. Click here to what roles each intends to play.

United Parcel Service said that 51 of its franchised UPS Stores experienced a payments-related data breach affecting about 105,000 payment transactions between January and August. Click here to learn how UPS is reacting.

Supervalu has been hit with a class-action lawsuit claiming the grocery chain failed to abide by best practices and industry standards for payment-processing security. Click here to find out how many payment cards the company says were affected.

ATM skimmers are getting more sophisticated, with the new twist involving razor-thin inserts made to fit inside the card acceptance slot. Click here to learn where this security issue is hitting hardest.

Visa and MasterCard will face class-action lawsuits over the questionable security of their payment cards in the wake of the massive 2013 Target payment-card breach. But the cases won’t be together with class-action lawsuits against Target. Click here to learn why.