As all payments companies know, some active accounts are more active than others. On Tuesday, PayPal Holdings Inc.’s top executives made it plain the company’s 2022 priority is to emphasize—and pour money into promoting—accountholder activity. “The shift is, we’re not going to throw marketing dollars at low-value customers coming in,” …
Read More »Silvergate’s Deal for Diem’s Assets Caps a Troubled Saga for the Facebook-Initiated Venture
Silvergate Capital Corp. late Monday confirmed widespread reports that it has acquired assets from the stablecoin venture Diem Group. The deal, valued at $182 million in cash and stock, includes Diem’s intellectual property and “other technology assets related to running a blockchain-based payment network,” according to the announcement. The La …
Read More »Digital ID Firms Will Cash in As Consumers Pour into Online Commerce, Juniper Projects
Consumers worldwide went online in unprecedented numbers following the onset of the pandemic, but along with that trend comes an increasing need to establish the identities of users, according to a report issued Monday by Juniper Research. As a result, revenue for companies around the world that develop technology that …
Read More »A Re-Energized Visa Sees Growth Coming From ‘BNPL, Crypto, And Wallets’
Visa Inc.’s top executives made it plain Thursday afternoon that the story of the company’s growth into the near future is threefold, including cryptocurrency, cross-border transactions, and the buy now, pay later trend. “Visa is enabling scale for BNPL, crypto, and wallets,” Visa chief executive Alfred Kelly told equity analysts …
Read More »Mastercard: All in on Open Banking, But Not on Amazon’s Fee Dispute With Visa
Top executives at Mastercard Inc. made it plain early Thursday the card network is determined to develop its account-to-account payment capabilities, while maintaining its distance from the dispute between its rival Visa Inc. and the e-commerce juggernaut Amazon.com Inc. over transaction pricing. “That’s fundamentally a question for Visa and Amazon,” …
Read More »Diem’s Troubled Story Could Be Winding Down With Reports of Its Efforts to Dissolve
The turbulent story of the Diem digital currency recorded yet another twist with reports on Tuesday that the two-and-a-half-year-old project is seeking to dispose of its assets. The latest news, first reported by Bloomberg, comes less than a year after the Diem Association moved its headquarters from Switzerland to the …
Read More »AmEx Downplays Crypto And BNPL As It Posts a Revenue Jump ‘Beyond Our Expectations’
American Express Co. saw its crucial travel-and-entertainment business continue to recover in the final three months of 2021, leading top company executives Tuesday morning to express considerable optimism for 2022. But don’t look any time soon for the New York City-based card giant to make any major forays into buy …
Read More »A Digital Dollar Backer Applauds the Fed But Stresses a Need for Privacy Protections
The Federal Reserve’s release last week of a discussion paper exploring a central bank digital currency for the United States has evoked interest from a group that emerged two years ago to help launch just such an initiative. The Digital Dollar Project on Friday applauded the Fed’s effort and underscored …
Read More »The Fed’s Paper on a U.S. Digital Currency Offers Few Signs of How the Regulator Is Leaning
The Federal Reserve Board released a paper Thursday afternoon on the question of a central bank digital currency for the United States, and even though the Fed would play a crucial role in any such venture, observers looking for hints on how the central bank is leaning on the issue …
Read More »The ACH Posts a Big Quarterly Gain As Same-Day, B2B, And Health-Care Payments Soar
The nation’s automated clearing house network handled 7.5 billion transactions in the fourth quarter of 2021, up 6.1% over the same period in 2020, Nacha reported Thursday. The growth was driven largely by gains in health-care and business-to-business payments, as well as robust increases in same-day ACH, the network’s faster-payments …
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