Consumers with subprime or deep subprime credit scores accounted for the majority of buy now, pay later originations from 2021 to 2022, a report by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finds. Within those two subsets, 45% of BNPL loans during that period were taken out by consumers with deep subprime …
Read More »Checkbook Acquires sureti and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 1/10/25
Payments platform Checkbook has acquired sureti, a provider of technology for the distribution of insurance payouts. Terms were not announced. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said it is asking for comment on implementing existing financial privacy law and how to address what it labeled intrusive data collection and personalized pricing. It also wants comment …
Read More »Expecting A CCCA Revival, Opponents Spell Out the Bill’s Economic Impact
Opponents of the proposed Credit Card Competition Act expect the bill will be reintroduced in Congress, so the Electronic Payments Coalition launched a pre-emptive strike late Wednesday with a report detailing the bill’s potential economic impact. The study, conducted by Oxford Economics Research, claims the CCCA’s impact on the U.S. …
Read More »X9 Issues QR Code Standard and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 1/7/25
The Accredited Standards Committee X9 Inc. has published a standard, “QR Code Protection Using Cryptographic Solutions, X9.148,” laying out how to create secure QR codes. Nuvei Corp. announced it will provide payments processing in a partnership with GIG, a technology company specializing in the iGaming business. Paysafe Ltd. has won approval from the …
Read More »Affinity FCU Partners With a Payments Fintech to Boost Financial Literacy
Affinity Federal Credit Union is working with fintech Greenlight Financial Technology Inc. to launch a financial-literacy program. The program will provide Affinity members and their families free access to Greenlight’s mobile app and debit card for kids and teens. The app allows parents to manage their child’s spending, send money, …
Read More »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 …
Read More »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 …
Read More »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 …
Read More »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 …
Read More »Merchants Hit Back at a Banking Group’s Request That the Fed Hold off on Reducing a Debit Interchange Cap
The Merchants Payments Coalition fired back late Monday at a request last week from the American Bankers Association that the Federal Reserve not act on a proposal to lower a longstanding limit on the interchange banks can earn on debit card transactions. In a letter to the Fed, the MPC …
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