Sweden’s Klarna AB has 21 million users in the U.S. market for its buy now, pay later app, but it wants a lot more. On Tuesday, it announced it will ease payments for its users by letting them pay off installments via direct transfers from their bank account. The service …
Read More »Wells And HSBC Unveil a Blockchain for Faster And Cheaper Cross-Border Transfers
The world’s banking giants may or may not adopt cryptocurrencies at some point, but they are clearly looking to adopt the distributed-ledger technology that undergirds digital money. In the latest such move, Wells Fargo & Co. and HSBC Bank plc early Monday announced they have agreed to process cross-border transactions …
Read More »As BNPL’s Allure Continues to Grow, ISOs Set Out to Mine the Merchant Potential
The pandemic has lent momentum to a number of trends in digital payments, but one of the biggest is the buy now, pay later option. It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that providers of the service are now looking to sell the service to merchants of all sizes through the acquiring …
Read More »Fortis Fortifies Its Position With ISVs Via Its Acquisition of VIP Integrated Payments
Fortis has proven in recent months to be one of the country’s most active payments providers when it comes to extending capabilities for independent software vendors, and now it has expanded further in that business with its acquisition of VIP Integrated Payments in a deal announced Wednesday. Terms were not …
Read More »Eye on Crypto: Visa Launches a Consulting Unit; Nextech Links to Coinbase for Acceptance
With interest in cryptocurrency increasing at the two major card networks, it was only a matter of time before one of them launched a consulting service specializing in the subject. Visa Inc. early Wednesday announced it is launching its Global Crypto Advisory Practice as part of its existing Visa Consulting …
Read More »With At-Pump EMV a Work in Progress, Providers Look to Mask Card Transactions With Encryption
The switchover of gasoline stations in the United States to the EMV chip card standard has been a work in progress, but now products are emerging that can secure card data at the pump through a technology known as point-to-point encryption. Payments provider ACI Worldwide Inc. early Tuesday said it …
Read More »Tassat Scores Western Alliance Bank for Its Bank-Based Blockchain-Payment Technology
Stablecoins have come in for government scrutiny in recent weeks, but use of this blockchain-based technology to enable immediate business-to-business payments between bank clients is moving forward nonetheless. Late Thursday, Tassat Group Inc. announced Phoenix-based Western Alliance Bank will use the company’s TassatPay technology to allow business clients to pay …
Read More »How Square’s Name Change to Block Hints at an Even Stronger Push for Bitcoin
The word “block” may have a number of meanings, but for Square Inc. it could mean a stronger emphasis on blockchain. That’s how some observers interpret the company’s announcement Wednesday afternoon that it is changing its name effective Dec. 10 to Block Inc., a dozen years after its founding as …
Read More »Consumers Are Largely ‘in the Dark’ About How Much Fintech Apps Access Their Data
Consumers have relied more heavily on payments apps and other fintech technologies since the onset of the pandemic, but few are aware of how much control these apps have over consumer data, according to a survey released Wednesday by The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC. In fact, consumer confidence in …
Read More »In Cyber Monday’s Shopping Frenzy, Smart Phones Cooled off While BNPL Took off
Cyber Monday 2021 is in the books, and a number of lessons have emerged from the biggest online-shopping day of the year regarding how consumers are spending. They didn’t use their mobile phones as much as expected, buy now, pay later picked up some momentum, and inflation asserted itself in …
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