Issuing/Originating

In preparation for the launch of its FedNow instant payments program in 2023, the Federal Reserve announced Monday it has begun the testing phase for the program, including the onboarding of participating organizations. More than 120 organizations, including Square Financial Services Inc., an industrial-bank subsidiary of Block Inc., and Q2 …

Electronic payments options for legal cannabis sales broadened their reach with Thursday’s deal between Aeropay, a digital payments provider specializing in cannabis sales, and Flowhub, a point-of-sale platform for legal cannabis dispensaries. The deal will enable more than 1,000 dispensaries using Flowhub’s POS software to accept ACH payments. To initiate …

A key business for international card companies is cross-border travel, which took a big hit with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic early in 2020. But now it appears that business is staging a comeback. Mastercard Inc. reported Thursday its cross-border volume in March climbed above numbers last seen in …

Thanks to more businesses implementing fraud-prevention tools, global digital fraud decreased more than 22% during the first quarter of 2022, compared to the same period a year earlier, according to TransUnion LLC’s quarterly digital-fraud analysis, released Thursday.  On a per-category basis, financial services, telecommunications, and retail all saw declines in …

Aeropay, a specialist in payments for the cannabis industry, announced it and Flowhub, a point-of-sale platform for cannabis dispensaries, will work together on enabling automated clearing house payments via Aeropay for more than 1,000 dispensaries using Flowhub’s software.Paysafe Ltd. said it is expanding in the auto-finance market through a deal to …

As the mass exodus of Ukrainian refugees fleeing their war-torn country continues, charitable organizations and businesses are finding new ways to provide support. Cryptocurrency exchange and blockchain-infrastructure provider Binance joined those efforts Tuesday, announcing the Binance Refugee Crypto Card. The Visa-branded debit card will allow displaced Ukrainians to make or …

With the expected introduction by the Federal Reserve next year of a commercial real-time payments platform for the United States, total instant payments in the U.S. market will rise nearly five-fold, to 8.9 billion, by 2026. That’s up from 1.8 billion last year. The dollar volume on these transactions will …

The payments platform Choice Inc. has acquired payments provider Direct Payment Consultants, boosting Choice to more than $3 billion in annual volume on more than 7,000 clients. In a separate transaction, Choice has been acquired by Nexa Equity LLC, a private-equity firm. The terms of the two transactions were not disclosed.A startup …

Apple Inc. is switching its network affiliation for its Apple Pay Cash virtual debit card to Visa Inc. after more than four years of issuing the card on the Discover Network. Information about the rationale for the move was not immediately available as the news emerged late last week on …

With consumers—and criminals—flocking to e-commerce, card issuers and merchants are not only experiencing a significant increase in fraud, but also in so-called friendly fraud committed by cardholders who dispute legitimate purchases after the fact. As a result, merchants’ need for stronger cardholder verification tools is growing. To address that need, …