November, 2022

• 1 November

  Apple Pay Later Reconsidered

  

  Apple’s venture into BNPL may prove more difficult for the computing giant than it thinks. When Apple officially announced its new Apple Pay Later feature this summer, many in the industry weren’t surprised. Yet it ushered in renewed anxiety for existing card-based BNPL market leaders, as it added another layer …

October, 2022

• 1 October

  Travel Now, Pay Later

  

  Vacation and hospitality booking is the next wave in BNPL. Picture this. You’re on the beach. The sun is shining and the luxury resort you’re staying at is the farthest from home you’ve been in nearly two years. But you don’t worry about how much it costs. That’s because you, …

July, 2022

• 1 July

  BNPL’s Bumpy Road

  

  The buy now, pay later trend is one of the hottest in payments. But rising rates, higher inflation, and stiffer rivalry could cool things off. Few trends in payments have been as explosive as instant credit online or at the point of sale, with no interest if the installments are …

May, 2022

• 1 May

  In Transit Payments, Collaboration Is Key

  

  Agencies that work with vendors on innovation and service will get more of both. Word on the street is that some transit agencies are choosing to opt for more modular approaches when it comes to their transit-payment systems, picking and choosing different vendors for different parts of their systems. Agencies …

April, 2022

• 1 April

  Has Real Disruption Finally Arrived?

  

  Creative, norm-breaking advances in payments can happen in the strangest places. Just ask BIM Networks, Discover—and the ACH. Another $13 billion poured into the top 250 fintech startups last year as investors doubled down on the business potential of disrupting staid financial-services providers and the moribund card-payments infrastructure. But where’s …

December, 2021

• 1 December

  The Digital Financial Services Playbook

  

  Advanced technologies and open banking have rewritten the rules for success in payments and other crucial financial services. Here’s how to compete—and win. Yes, the future of financial services is digital. But so is the present. Increasingly, traditional institutions, fintechs, and service providers are coming together like a set of …

July, 2021

• 1 July

  Fintechs Take Aim at B2B Payments

  

  Financial-technology service providers are out to disrupt business-to-business payments. But rather than displacing banks, fintechs are looking to make them their partners. From virtual cards to digital invoices with embedded payment links, financial-services technology providers are aggressively targeting business-to-business payments. Fintechs are pushing into the B2B space—which has long been …

February, 2021

• 28 February

  How Payments Is Embracing Blank Checks

  

  Increasingly, payments providers are discovering that the familiar IPO isn’t the only way to cash in on the public markets. He was “dead set against” it, until he was for it, Flint Lane says. The “it” was the way Lane’s company, Billtrust, traded two decades of private ownership to go …

January, 2021

• 29 January

  Decisions, Decisions

  

  Is your bill-pay provider setting you up for success? Use this checklist to decide. According to popular legend, the first online payment was made in 1994, for a Pizza Hut pepperoni and mushroom pizza. Whether that holds true or not, online payment processing has grown by leaps and bounds since …
• 1 January

  What’s in the Cards?

  

  Visa and Mastercard are the world’s premier networks for card transactions. Can they afford to rest content with that distinction? It’s safe to say that most readers of this story have spent most of their adult lives with plastic tokens branded by Visa or Mastercard in their wallet. The two …