Central bank digital currencies, cryptoassets, and privacy are three major priorities for the Electronic Transactions Association in 2022, the payments industry’s top lobbying group announced late Friday. All three are hot-button topics featuring strong opinions on opposing sides, presenting the payments industry with an uncertain roadmap for navigating the issues …
Read More »New Data From Mastercard Confirm the Explosion in Online Volume Is Still in Progress
E-commerce was hitting its stride before the pandemic, but two years later it’s clear sales volume via desktop and mobile devices is exploding. Online sales in the United States jumped fully 60.4% in December compared to December in 2019, according to the latest SpendingPulse report from Mastercard Inc., released late …
Read More »Eye on Crypto: CSI Ushers Community Banks Into Bitcoin; MoneyGram Invests in Coinme
Dismissed until recently by many in the payments industry as a fantasy, cryptocurrency as a payments medium continues to step toward center stage. Early Thursday, transaction processor Computer Services Inc. said it will work with NYDIG to help community banks support their customers who want to buy, sell, or hold …
Read More »Adyen Unveils a Line of All-in-One Android Devices for Mobile POS Deployments
Adyen Inc., known for its e-commerce payment services, on Tuesday launched a range of mobile point-of-sale devices running on the Android operating system. The new multifunction terminals are available in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union. Adyen, which is based in Amsterdam but maintains offices in …
Read More »Consumers Stick With Banks for Years, While Some Bear Hefty Account Fees, Bankrate Says
The basis of digital payments is typically an account at a financial institution, which can hand these institutions quite a bit of influence over payment activity. It turns out, though, that consumers like to stick with their bank once they’ve opened an account. Even among persons aged 18 to 34, …
Read More »How the ACH May Have Been the Winner of the Pandemic Payments Sweepstakes
The share of payments claimed by the automated clearing house rose faster in 2020 than the share for cards, while checks dropped markedly. All the while, the share of payments claimed by cards, which had been steadily on the rise for years, flattened out. And while contactless transactions did rise …
Read More »Fingerprint Signs a Deal to Bring Its Iris-Recognition Tech to Devices From Indian Firm Mantra
Fingerprint Cards AB early Wednesday said it has agreed to provide iris-recognition technology to Mantra Softech India Pvt Ltd., said to be the largest provider in India of biometric devices and sensors. Terms of the multi-year contract were not disclosed. Under the terms of the deal, Mantra will deploy the …
Read More »Ransomware May Be Terrorism, But Security Pros Differ Markedly in How to Deal With It
Security professionals around the world equate ransomware attacks with terrorism, but they differ markedly from country to country in their willingness to play ball with the attackers. That’s according to survey results released Tuesday that gathered data from more than 1,500 security executives in the United States, the United Kingdom, …
Read More »With BNPL’s Fast Rise, the CFPB Issues a Demand Letter Seeking Data From Five Firms
The explosion in buy now, pay later point-of-sale lending was bound to catch the eye of regulators sooner or later, and on Thursday the other shoe dropped with a letter sent to five leading BNPL firms from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau requesting information on their services. The five—Affirm Inc., …
Read More »Vibes, a Provider of Mobile Marketing Tech, Launches ‘Mobile Wallet as a Channel’
As mobile-wallet technology matures, marketers are starting to look at ways to reach consumers with content that stays in the wallet as permanently as a credit or debit card. The latest move in this direction emerged Wednesday with the unveiling of “Mobile Wallet as a Channel,” a service that lets …
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