Mobile Commerce

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, …

Small-business sales were up 4.9% year-over-year in December as consumers maintained strong retail spending while diverting more to service-based businesses, found the latest Fiserv Small Business Index. Launched a year ago, the index analyzes transaction data from approximately 2 million U.S. small businesses on the Fiserv Inc. and Clover point-of-sale …

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 …

The Internal Revenue Service will begin requiring peer-to-peer payment apps in 2025 to issue 1099-K statements to self-employed workers who received more than $5,000 in payments through those apps in 2024. The new requirement, which is being implemented after a two-year delay, applies to such P2P apps as PayPal, Venmo, …

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 …

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 …

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 …

The worldwide market for buy now, pay later will grow to a volume of $112.36 billion by 2029, up from $32.89 billion in 2023, representing a compound annual growth rate of 22.5%, according to the “Buy Now Pay Later Platform Market” report from Research and Markets. Challenges the market faces include regulatory …

The FinCEN Beneficial Ownership Information mandate is back in force with a recent court decision. That rule, part of the Corporate Transparency Act passed in 2024,had required businesses to file a Beneficial Ownership Information report by Jan. 1, which was delayed earlier in December but now makes these reports due Jan. 13. Businesses formed …

The outlook for payments in 2025 will be rife with open finance, instant payments, multi-rail payments, interchange questions, and the increasing use of artificial intelligence, observers suggest. The top three payments trends next year will be open finance, instant payments adoption, and point-of-sale innovations, says Capgemini Research Institute in its …