Consumer demand for buy now, pay later loans may be high, but consumers are still at risk of overspending when using BNPL to finance a purchase or missing a payment. A survey released Thursday by Bankrate LLC reveals that overspending and missing a payment are two of the most common …
Read More »How Discover Looks to Reap Call-Center Efficiencies With Generative AI
The generative AI revolution received a significant boost from Discover Financial Services with the card network’s announcement early Tuesday it is deploying the artificial-intelligence technology within the Google Cloud platform in Discover’s call center. With the deployment, Discover’s nearly 10,000 customer-service agents will have access to intelligent document summarization through …
Read More »Mastercard Realigns Units and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 4/9/24
Mastercard Inc. announced an organizational realignment that centers on core payments, commercial and new payment flows, and services. Jorn Lambert will lead core payments as chief product officer. Raj Seshadri will head commercial and new payment flows as chief commercial payments officer. Craig Vosburg becomes the chief services officer in charge …
Read More »Eye on AI: PayBlox Enlists AI for Statement Reviews; Colleen AI Tackles Rentals with Voice AI
The promise of lower credit and debit card processing fees is a big attraction for merchants to switch merchant providers. Statement reviews are a key part of that process and now PayBlox, a merchant services referral site, has enlisted artificial intelligence to help. With the debut of its Statement Spy …
Read More »Mobile Wallets and Contactless Payments Growing in Popularity, NFC Forum Says
Consumers are not only favoring contactless payments more, they are relying more on their mobile wallets to initiate payments, according to the NFC Forum’s bi-annual Near Field Communication Usage and Adoption study. The study, conducted by ABI Research, reveals that 95% of respondents have left their physical wallets at home …
Read More »With a Lower Cost and a No-Chargebacks Promise for Merchants, Pay by Bank Emerges as a Fiserv Priority
Pay by bank is not a new electronic-payments concept—consumers have been paying utility bills with their bank accounts for years—but the promise of lower fees and reduced merchant headaches is energizing the service, and work is at hand developing new use cases. Witness Radial Inc., an e-commerce platform adopting Link …
Read More »COMMENTARY: Cap One’s Bid for Discover Will Lift Many Boats
Capital One’s proposed $35.3-billion acquisition of Discover will be a thunderclap for the debit-card, retail-banking, and payment-network markets. The Discover network has long been the number-five U.S. retail-payment network, after Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and PayPal. Since its acquisition of Diners Club from Citi in 2008, Discover has struggled as …
Read More »Volume for the Top 50 ACH Banks And Credit Unions Increases 5.7% in 2023
The top 50 originating financial institutions on the automated clearing house network hit nearly 27.7 billion in payments in 2023, a 5.7% increase over 2022, Nacha says. Volume for the top 50 receiving FIs was almost 20 billion payments in 2023, a 6.4% increase from 2022. Herndon, Va.-based Nacha says …
Read More »Synthetic Identity Tops the Hit Parade of Tactics To Commit Digital Fraud, TransUnion Finds
Synthetic identity fraud has become the fastest growing form of digital fraud, totaling $3.1 billion in 2023, up from $1.9 million in 2020, a 63% increase, according to TransUnion LLC’s 2024 State of Omnichannel Fraud Report. Criminals are using synthetic identities, which are created from a combination of real and …
Read More »First-Party Fraud Continues to Bedevil Merchants, Mastercard Says
Chargebacks are always an issue for merchants. While there are numerous programs and indicators to identify fraudulent ones, detecting and managing first-party fraud—that committed by legitimate customers—can be tougher to root out. In response, Mastercard Inc. is pushing its First Party Trust Program, an artificial intelligence-based service that enables merchants …
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