In the nearly four months since it underwent a major downgrade in the incentive it offers miners, Bitcoin has seen its price rise nicely, but holders of the digital currency have not yet, at least, witnessed the wild upswing that followed the last such adjustment. Bitcoin was trading at $10,483 …
Read More »Data Networks Work to Shore up Account Access As Regulators Eye Rules of Their Own
The data networks that connect payments and other financial apps to users’ bank accounts are scrambling to standardize data access by moving to application programming interfaces and away from an older, cruder form of access known in the business as “screen scraping.” The effort comes as financial apps gain popularity …
Read More »Amid Covid’s Impact, Installment Pay Gets a Lift With New Offerings From Mastercard And Sezzle
Count transactional credit at the point of sale among the payment technologies winning more of the spotlight as consumers tentatively venture out and businesses reopen in the midst of Covid-19’s impact. Mastercard Inc. on Wednesday announced new integrations with the card-issuing processor TSYS and with technology providers that will let …
Read More »Phishing Gets Even Fishier As Online Criminals Turn a Security Protocol to Their Advantage
Online criminals are now launching most of their phishing attacks from domains secured by the HTTPS protocol—and they’re hijacking the sites they need to do it, according to the latest report from the Anti-Phishing Working Group, a security-industry organization that tracks the crime. Some 77.6% of phishing sites in the …
Read More »Small-Business Payments Provider Bill.com Logs Double-Digit Gains in Volumes
Payments volumes for small and mid-size businesses are growing at a quick pace, if the latest information from cloud-based payments-technology company Bill.com Inc. is any indication. The 14-year-old Palo Alto, Calif.-based company processed $25.4 billion in payment volume in the June quarter, fully 26% above the volume handled in the …
Read More »You’ve Heard How Consumers Have Turned to Online Channels. Now the Numbers Show It
It’s become a common assertion in the payments business that consumers are turning to online sites for shopping as they contend with the various impacts of Covid-19. Now government data indicates just how well-founded that assertion is. E-commerce dollar volume in the second quarter totaled $211.5 billion, up 32% from …
Read More »Klarna Sees Both Online And In-Store Volumes Grow as the U.S. Market Looms Large
Online volume has soared for Klarna AB but the Swedish payments company’s efforts to go into physical stores are also bearing fruit, the company reported early Thursday. Klarna, which offers consumers the opportunity at checkout to extend payments over time, reported its “in-store proposition” is now active in 10 geographic …
Read More »Visa Leverages Artificial Intelligence for Smarter Stand-in Processing
Refused transactions are frustrating enough for cardholders and merchants, but during a pandemic they could be especially nerve-wracking. Visa Inc. on Wednesday announced a new service for stand-in processing that the payments network says should yield faster and more accurate results when issuers’ systems are down. The new Smarter STIP …
Read More »Panera Recruits Google to Streamline Pickup And Delivery Via Mobile Apps
The Covid-19 pandemic has hastened merchants’ conversion to digital wallets and other forms of contactless payments, but at the same time the imperative for fast, if possible single-click, ordering has only grown more urgent. In the latest development, the Panera Bread chain announced Tuesday in integration with Google that allows …
Read More »MagicCube Looks to Expansion as Contactless Grows And Fresh Investment Pours in
With the Covid-19 pandemic accelerating consumer use and merchant acceptance of contactless cards, technology companies are scrambling to exploit new opportunities stemming from the trend. One technology that could get a boost is software that can turn any off-the-shelf smart phone into a payment-acceptance device, a development the major card …
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