Nine days into 2023, the ongoing wave of processor consolidation rolled further with the announcement early Monday that Nuvei Corp. has agreed to acquire Atlanta-based processor Paya Holdings Inc. in a deal valued at $1.3 billion. The transaction would bring to Montreal-based Nuvei a processor with deep roots in payments …
Read More »Why the FTC Isolated Mastercard With Its Pre-Christmas Consent Order
When the Federal Trade Commission announced two days before Christmas it had leveled a preliminary consent order against Mastercard Inc. to correct what the agency saw as roadblocks the card company had erected against routing online debit transactions to competing networks, the move may have surprised at least some observers. …
Read More »ID Theft Hits Black Victims’ Wallets Especially Hard, New Research Says
Identity theft is a national scourge, but initial research findings released early Wednesday indicate that scourge impacts Black victims far more than it does other segments of the U.S. population. The impact can be measured by the dollar losses ID theft victims suffer, according to the report. In one example …
Read More »Eye on Blockchain: RocketFuel Sees Rising Crypto Transaction Counts; Centbee Raises $1 Million
You wouldn’t know it from all the headline stories regarding the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, but below the surface commerce in digital currencies continues unabated, albeit still at very low volumes relative to commerce in fiat. RocketFuel Blockchain Inc., a San Francisco crypto processor for e-commerce merchants, announced …
Read More »Payments Veteran Bisignano Signs on As Fiserv Chairman and CEO for Another Five Years
Long-time payments executive Frank Bisignano, who has guided payments giant Fiserv Inc. through a tumultuous time in the payments industry, has signed on to lead the company for another five years. Bisignano became chairman of the Brookfield, Wis.-based company in May, following his appointment as chief executive in July 2020. …
Read More »Fraud on P2P Networks Hits 12% of Bank Customers in the U.S., J.D. Power Finds
Some 12% of U.S. customers have lost money to fraud on a peer-to-peer payment network, while 11% have seen it happen to a family member, according to survey results released earlier this month by J.D. Power. The networks cited by the respondents were Zelle, Venmo, and PayPal. For the survey, …
Read More »Sightline Payments Signs up Parx Casino for Wallet-Based Gambling Resortwide
Merchants of all sorts found themselves converting to digital payments acceptance over the past two years in the face of the pandemic, but one niche in particular has offered a fertile field for merchant acquirers: casinos. Online and on-premise gambling has attracted payments providers large and small, including specialists like …
Read More »The CFPB Proposes to Publish Details on State or Local Enforcement Actions
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has become a much more active regulator of payments and other financial industries since the onset of the Biden Administration, and on Monday the agency lent further momentum to that trend. The 11-year-old federal agency is now asking for public comment on a proposal that …
Read More »Global Card Networks Are Thriving, Though Domestic Systems Could Pose a Threat
The number of card-accepting merchant locations around the world reached a record high of 88 million in 2021, up 2% over 2020 as measures to fight the pandemic helped stoke consumer usage of payment cards rather than alternatives like cash, according to research released Monday by London-based research firm RBR. …
Read More »Crypto’s Headaches Started Long Before the Collapse of FTX, According to App Stats
Jitters about the economy and the impact of the FTX implosion may have combined to clobber the cryptocurrency market, but new data shows that app downloads peaked as long as a year ago. In fact, downloads of crypto trading apps from the App Store, and Google Play, along with direct …
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