Wednesday , March 26, 2025

Competitive Strategies

Services and Retail Consumer Spending Boost Fiserv’s Small Business Index

Small-business sales were up 4.9% year-over-year in December as consumers maintained strong retail spending while diverting more to service-based businesses, found the latest Fiserv Small Business Index. Launched a year ago, the index analyzes transaction data from approximately 2 million U.S. small businesses on the Fiserv Inc. and Clover point-of-sale …

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PayPal Faces Discrimination Lawsuit and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 1/6/25

An Asian-American businesswoman named Nisha Desai has sued PayPal Holdings Inc. on grounds of racial discrimination, alleging the company restricted some of a $535-million investment commitment to Black and Hispanic candidates. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, asks for unspecified damages and an order …

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The Payments Industry Works to Solve for X

The payments industry is heading into the new year with a significant question mark hanging over its head: What does it mean that the massive social network X is apparently planning to launch a payments network? Little is known so far about the initiative. A New Year’s Eve post on …

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PAR Technology Buys Delaget for $132 Million and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 1/2/25

PAR Technology Corp., a provider of restaurant point-of-sale technology, has paid $132 million to acquire Delaget LLC, a platform providing analytics and business intelligence to the dining industry. The purchase was chiefly made with PAR common stock. The social-media network X will launch a service this year called X Money, which …

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WhatsAppPay Rolls Out in India and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 12/31/24

Meta Platform’s WhatsApp payments service has been permitted by the National Payments Corp. of India, a regulatory body, to roll out WhatsApp Pay to its entire user base of 500 million in that country. Meta formerly was known as Facebook. GasBuddy, which offers a payments card featuring discounts on gasoline, forecasts the …

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iWallet’s Voice-Based AI Ordering and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 12/30/24

A startup called iWallet announced technology it says supports voice-based ordering using artificial intelligence, while also being compliant with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard. Bitget Wallet, a cryptocurrency platform, said it has surpassed 60 million users globally, achieving a 300% growth rate in user count for 2024. Janover Inc., a commercial …

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AI, Interchange, And Open Finance Are the Top Prospective 2025 Payments Trends

The outlook for payments in 2025 will be rife with open finance, instant payments, multi-rail payments, interchange questions, and the increasing use of artificial intelligence, observers suggest. The top three payments trends next year will be open finance, instant payments adoption, and point-of-sale innovations, says Capgemini Research Institute in its …

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An Injunction Against Illinois’s Interchange Act Leaves Both Sides Claiming Victory

United States District Court Judge Virginia Kendell granted a preliminary injunction late Friday that provides banks some relief from the pending Illinois Interchange Fee Prohibition Act, but also gives merchants reason to cheer. Kendell, who is overseeing a lawsuit filed against the IIFPA, ruled the injunction applies only to financial …

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Fiserv Snaps up Payfare for Embedded Payments; Mastercard Closes on Recorded Future

Fiserv Inc. is looking to beef up its capabilities in embedded payments with an agreement to acquire Payfare Inc., a Toronto-based company, for $201.5 million Canadian, or approximately $139 million in U.S. currency. The deal, which was announced early Monday and is subject to shareholder approval, comes as processors look …

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WooCommerce Makes Affirm Its Go-To BNPL Provider

WooCommerce is making Affirm Holdings Inc. its default buy now, pay later payment option, the e-commerce platform provider announced early Thursday. WooCommerce has offered Affirm as a payment option since 2015. In 2022, WooCommerce began offering Affirm to its merchants in Canada.  As part of the deal, eligible merchants will …

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Digital Transactions