The allure of subscription payments has captured the fancy of merchants and payments companies alike, but churn—the loss of a paying customer—may not only affect revenue, but hamper innovation, finds “The Art and Science of Reducing Involuntary Subscriber Churn” report released Wednesday by Digital River Inc. The report, which canvassed …

The sudden proliferation of Web sites hosting phishing attacks that began in October cooled only slightly in November, as online fraudsters continue to create multiple sub-domains to foil anti-phishing filters. The number of unique phishing sites came to 37,439, essentially flat with the 37,444 reported for October, according to the …

Artificial intelligence tools may still be in development, but their utility for acquirers is quickly becoming apparent. “A lot of people think it’s a ‘nice to have,’ but it’s no longer a ‘nice to have,’” Sebastian Builes, cofounder and chief executive at Arcum, a merchant-retention firm that uses AI, told …

Fraud is nothing if not a persistent part of the payments landscape. It became more so in the past 12 months, as 60% of e-commerce merchants and 53% of retailers sustained increases in overall fraud levels, finds LexisNexis Risk Solutions in the 14th edition of its “LexisNexis True Cost of …

Mastercard Inc. released Smart Subscriptions, a service to help issuers provide subscription-management tools to their cardholders. In related news, Recurly Inc., a subscription-services provider, released its consumer software subscription benchmark report. The Smart Subscriptions service builds on Mastercard’s Subscriptions Control product, released in 2023, to provide spend analysis, a way …

Bruce Lowthers has been a man on a mission since taking over as chief executive at a struggling Paysafe Ltd. nearly two years ago, and early on Thursday he laid out an agenda for the work his company has yet to do. While he touted some improvement so far, “there …

Faced with a proposal to make it easier to stop a subscription, payments companies and subscription specialists have much to ponder. Everyone dreads the inevitable sales pitch that comes when trying to cancel some subscriptions. There’s multiple pages to read online and the search to find the diminutive cancel button. …

Independent sales organizations can’t do much without a sponsor bank, also known as an acquiring bank, to get them access to the payment card networks. As with most business endeavors, the complexity of finding a sponsor bank has increased. It’s a challenge that attendees at the 2023 Midwest Acquirers Association …

The big may get bigger, but there’s plenty of room for smaller ISOs and payments companies to thrive and capitalize. With megaprocessors, fintechs, payfacs, and integrated payments providers abundant in the payments world, smaller independent sales organizations and software sellers may feel some pressure. But the competition does not automatically …

The most popular payment method for funding subscription payments is a debit card, with the checking account-connected option being used for 52.9% of global subscription payments. Subscription platform Recurly Inc. released this and other data in its “2023 State of Subscriptions” report Tuesday. The second most popular option was credit …