January, 2024

• 1 January

  Acquirers and the CCCA

  

  The Credit Card Competition Act, if it becomes law, will likely have unintended consequences for the businesses that sign up merchants for payment processing. Not all of them are good. Introduced more than a year ago, the Credit Card Competition Act has quickly become the hottest topic in the payments …

December, 2023

• 1 December

  Fixing the Online Checkout

  

  E-commerce checkouts are still too clunky. Now, efforts by payments experts and at least one new network may at last solve that problem. In the battle for the e-commerce checkout—with a successful sale counting as a win—the accelerated checkout is gaining favor. One contender that’s not even available yet may …

November, 2023

• 1 November

  17th Annual The 10 Most Pressing Issues in E-Payments

  

  We know you’re not looking for problems. But they are looking for you. Here’s our annual catalog of the ones causing the most headaches. If adversity breeds strength, as the old saying goes, then payments professionals may have plenty of opportunity to develop their strategic and tactical biceps. The industry …

October, 2023

• 1 October

  What’s next for FedNow?

  

  Now that FedNow is available, the real work begins. But will the new system compete or collaborate with existing real-time networks? FedNow, the real-time payments service from the Federal Reserve, launched with 35 participating institutions on July 20, almost 13 years after the Fed’s same-day automated clearing house settlement window …

September, 2023

• 1 September

  Who Will Route Transactions?

  

  The Credit Card Competition Act is back in play. But as Congress debates the bill, a pressing question looms about its biggest requirement: Who are the Visa and Mastercard alternatives supposed to be? Senator Richard Durbin is back at it. After failing to advance the Credit Card Competition Act out …

July, 2023

• 1 July

  Can Visa+ Transform P2P Payments?

  

  Peer-to-peer transfers have turned into big business, but one nagging problem remains: there’s no interoperability between networks. Visa is forging a solution, though there are complications.  Peer-to-peer payments have in a relatively short period of time become ingrained in consumers’ daily lives. Whether it’s sending a family member birthday cash, …

June, 2023

• 1 June

  Fraud in an Instant

  

  The fraud that threatens real-time payments is quicker—and demands quicker action. Today’s world of instant gratification is about to take another big leap forward in July when a second real-time payments network debuts with the launch of FedNow, the Federal Reserve’s instant-payment network. Announced as a concept in 2019, two …

May, 2023

• 1 May

  15th Annual Field Guide to Innovative Payments

  

  It’s May, and that means it’s time for our annual exercise to seek out and describe the payments players, apart from the big networks, that are rewriting the rules for the digital exchange of value. Since 2004, Digital Transactions has traced the course of payments innovation through its nimblest practitioners—the …

April, 2023

• 1 April

  Picking Up the Tempo

  

  You may have only recently started to hear about payments orchestration. You’re going to hear a lot more about it as payment methods and routing choices multiply. Everybody in the business has heard for years how complicated payments are. In the old days, merchants were local, and all they accepted …

March, 2023

• 1 March

  Into the Metaverse

  

  Processors are hoping to tap commerce, and hence payments, in the world of virtual reality. But as the metaverse keeps evolving, what kind of payoff can they expect?  If you’re aware of the metaverse but are not exactly sure what it is and how commerce in it will work, you’re …