Mobile Commerce

Consumer spending in the United States, in terms of February retail sales excluding auto, was up 8.7% over February 2021 and 17.3% over February 2019, according to Mastercard Inc.’s SpendingPulse report, which monitors in-store and online retail sales.President Joe Biden signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to work out a common …

Consumers accustomed to the PayPal and Venmo digital wallets from PayPal Holdings Inc. can now deploy them to make federal tax payments when using the ACI Payments Inc. service. Announced Tuesday by parent company ACI Worldwide Inc., the service adds another digital tax payment option. And ACI Payments, which ACI …

Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. will raise interchange rates for online merchants starting next month, while also lowering the rates for some small-merchant categories, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. Mastercard’s fee changes alone will result in a net increase of about $330 million yearly, according to the Journal story, …

As Russian armed forces continue their assault on Ukraine, Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc., and American Express Co. late Saturday said they are suspending all operations in Russia, following up on actions taken by the networks nearly a week earlier. Meanwhile, reports began to filter out of Russia that at least some …

The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC said transaction volume on EPN, its automated clearing house network, increased 9.6% in 2021. The Clearing House and the Federal Reserve, the only ACH operators in the United States, each handle approximately half the commercial ACH market, TCH said.Buy now, pay later provider Sezzle Inc. said Yapstone …

With card issuers making it easier to dispute a transaction in the two years since the Covid-19 pandemic hit, observers say it has become harder for them to distinguish good customers from bad customers, especially when a transaction is disputed post-purchase. The latter case is when friendly fraud can occur, …

Buy now, pay later has been around for years, but since the onset of the Covid pandemic it has soared in popularity, attracting heavyweight payments companies, opening new payment avenues for consumers, and drawing the attention of federal regulators. Late Thursday, Splitit Payments Ltd. was the latest practitioner to report …

Visa Inc. will decrease interchange rates by 10% for small businesses accepting consumer credit cards in April, according to a Reuters report. The reduced rates will apply to online and card-present transactions and only to merchants with $250,000 or less in Visa consumer credit volumes, Reuters attributed its information to an …

Despite the economy reopening after the disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, e-commerce continues to boom as consumers embrace shopping online from home or via their mobile device.  A recent study from FIS Inc. reveals that e-commerce transaction values in the United States grew 10% in 2021 compared to 2020, …

The actions taken by the SWIFT payments-messaging network and by Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine will have an impact, but a muted one, observers say.  The 49-year-old SWIFT system, which on Saturday said it is banning Russian banks, has not barred all …