E-Commerce

Not all countries, companies, and persons will suffer equally from inflation in 2023, as Europe will see a decline in economic activity while the U.S. market will experience limited economic growth, forecasts the Mastercard Economics Institute. Food-service provider Sodexo North America’s InReach unit has contracted with payments provider Cantaloupe to upgrade 18,800 vending machiens and …

Airwallex, an Australia-based fintech, has partnered with Plaid Inc. to enable merchants in the United States to streamline transactions initiated through the automated clearing house. Airwallex merchants can leverage Plaid’s open-banking technology to authorize adding funds to their Airwallex wallet from an external bank account or to accept payments from …

Digital bill payment has become table stakes for billers as consumers have increasingly gravitated toward paying their bills through mobile and online channels the past two years, according to a recent survey by EngageSmart, a provider of a customer-engagement and payment applications. The study reveals that 50% of respondents say …

Jitters about the economy and the impact of the FTX implosion may have combined to clobber the cryptocurrency market, but new data shows that app downloads peaked as long as a year ago. In fact, downloads of crypto trading apps from the App Store, and Google Play, along with direct …

The messaging app Clickatell added updates to its Chat Commerce Platform, including a new integration of Chat 2 Pay, which allows travel brands to accept payments as part of business messages. The card-issuing platform Marqeta Inc. announced it has integrated Mastercard Track Instant Pay, which enables immediate payment of supplier invoices. The virtual-card platform Extend announced …

The big Internet services provider GoDaddy Inc. said on Tuesday it is using its Manage WooCommerce Stores technology to help sellers open and manage a store on the WordPress online platform. The move, which could bring more small sellers into the e-commerce fold, is aimed at untangling the complexity GoDaddy …

Payment platform provider NMI has acquired Agreement Express Inc.’s merchant onboarding, underwriting, and monitoring technologies. The acquisition, which is for the payments portion of Agreement Express’s total business, is aimed at allowing NMI to provide integrated software vendors, independent sales organizations, and fintechs with tools that can speed up merchant …

Curve OS Ltd. said it secured a deal with Credit Suisse to fund its first $1 billion in installment loans, via its Curve Flex product, in the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States. London-based Curve announced Curve Flex in 2021. A survey from Bango PLC of 2,500 U.S. subscription users found that 65% said …

Digital-currency platform Circle Internet Financial Corp. said it and Concord Acquisition Corp. have agreed to terminate a merger the companies had agreed to in July 2021 and amended in February. Nine-year-old Circle posted its first profit in the third quarter, with net income of $43 million. A 2-year-old U.K.-based e-commerce payments provider called Wamo said …

To counter the rising tide of first-party misuse chargebacks, also known as “friendly fraud,” Chargeback Gurus has introduced ARI, a predictive-analytics engine the company says can identify transactions likely to be disputed by the cardholder, even though the transaction is legitimate. ARI uses artificial intelligence to analyze data gathered from …