TRENDING: How DraftKings Ups Its Payment Game

Mobile technology is all about helping different parties readily connect. In the B2B payments space, those connections can lead to new payment capabilities and new opportunities for merchants to build loyal customers.

The latest PYMNTS Payments As a Service Tracker showcases the efforts various companies are making to help merchants and small businesses expand their usage of mobile technology to better connect with their customers, including through new rewards programs and mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) systems.

The latest from around the PaaS world

Mobile technology is promising to introduce big changes to payment operations, even for the smallest of merchants.

Self-serve kiosk manufacturer NCR Corporation, for example, recently launched a new service specifically for micro businesses, which, according to the Small Business Administration (SBA), are companies with between one and nine employees. NCR’s new service, called Ring Up, offers these smaller merchants a Worldpay-powered mobile reader to wirelessly connect with Android or iOS devices. The Ring Up solution enables micro businesses to accept chip and swipe payments as well as the ability to build a database of customers to develop long-term relationships.

Other companies recently launched mobile solutions to help merchants better connect with customers through rewards programs. One such mobile-first rewards program solution, the result of a partnership between POS solutions provider Revel Systems and mobile loyalty program solutions provider LoyaltyPlant, is intended to help merchants offer mobile ordering capabilities and engage with customers through targeted marketing. The investment in mobile ordering allows businesses to better connect with millennial customers, and recent research indicates 73 percent of millennial consumers report they have made purchases on their smartphones.

New payment options have also been introduced to the sports betting market in recent weeks. That’s the case in the U.K., where betting service Colossus Bets recently reached an agreement with online payment solutions provider Easy Payment Gateway to expand its range of payment methods. By entering the agreement, Colossus will gain access to 220 payment acquirers, solutions and digital wallet services, a development that could help the betting platform offer its users a more streamlined payment process.

For more of the latest recent notable news from around the PaaS space, check out the October edition of the Payments As a Service Tracker.

How fantasy sports are changing the payments game

Preferences in fantasy sports vary from region to region. In big international markets, including Europe and Latin America, the top fantasy sport is football (also known in the U.S. as soccer) while in others, the preferred fantasy sport is cricket. Regardless of sport of choice, though, fans prefer a smooth payment and checkout experience when participating in online competitions against other fans.

For the October Tracker’s feature story, PYMNTS caught up with Jeffrey Haas, chief international officer of DraftKings, about the fantasy sports site’s efforts to expand into new global territories, offer a seamless checkout experience in the markets in which it operates and navigate regulatory challenges in each new market where it seeks to expand its business.

To read the story and see who’s on top in our ranking of the best PaaS providers, download the latest Tracker.

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To download the October edition of the PYMNTS.com Payments As a Service Tracker, click the button below.

About the Tracker

The PYMNTS.com Payments As a Service Tracker is designed to give an overview of the trends and activities of merchant platforms that not only enable payment processing of new and old technologies, but also integrate with other features to improve the merchant’s experience, including customer engagement, security, omnichannel retail, analytics, inventory management, software and hardware management and more.