Issuing/Originating

Looking to help fintechs speed development of new banking applications, Unit, a banking-as-a-service platform, announced Thursday a pilot production environment that allows fintechs to instantly build and validate applications using real funds. The new product is expected to enable fintechs to build and test live bank accounts and issue virtual …

The Federal Reserve Board released a paper Thursday afternoon on the question of a central bank digital currency for the United States, and even though the Fed would play a crucial role in any such venture, observers looking for hints on how the central bank is leaning on the issue …

Discover Financial Services reported a net income of $1.1 billion in the fourth quarter, a 37.6% increase from $799 million in the fourth quarter of 2020. Net income for 2021 totaled $5.4 billion, a 391% increase from $1.1 billion in 2020. Discover said volume on its Pulse debit network was $64.8 …

The nation’s automated clearing house network handled 7.5 billion transactions in the fourth quarter of 2021, up 6.1% over the same period in 2020, Nacha reported Thursday. The growth was driven largely by gains in health-care and business-to-business payments, as well as robust increases in same-day ACH, the network’s faster-payments …

Mastercard Inc. launched Mastercard Track Instant Pay, a platform enabling instant payment of supplier invoices via virtual card transactions supported by machine learning. The service is available in the United States now, with plans to expand globally.Nuvei Corp. has been approved by the New York State Gaming Commission to process payments for …

Amazon.com Inc.’s decision to pull back from its threat to stop accepting Visa cards issued in the United Kingdom may have evoked a sigh of relief among some consumers, not to mention at Visa itself, but it also could betoken some complex dynamics behind the decision-making at both corporate giants. …

Mastercard Inc. said it is enabling Mastercard-branded cards to be used for purchases on Coinbase’s upcoming NFT marketplace. NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are digital goods.Accounting-automation company Bookkeep announced integrations with Stripe, Sage Intacct, and NetSuite. The company, which serves more than 600 retailers and restaurants, also offers links to Shopify, Square, Amazon, and …

As part of its effort to help users of its Phixius payment-data network mitigate fraud and enhance payment-routing certainty, Nacha announced Thursday the network will enable originators, fintechs, and financial institutions that originate and receive electronic payments to verify payment-related information, such as account ownership, account numbers, and routing information. …

It was probably only a matter of time before the two global card networks, which have already made overtures to blockchain technology, began venturing into support for central bank digital currencies. News of the latest development emerged very early Thursday with an announcement from Visa Inc. and blockchain software developer …

Visa Inc. announced a new payment platform, Visa Acceptance Cloud, which will let acquirers, payment service providers, point-of-sale system makers, and Internet of Things developers, to move the payment processing software from the hardware device to the computing cloud. Tests of the new platform are happening in North America, South America, …