Consumers and businesses are embracing instant payments at a fast clip, even as volume growth makes double-digit increases harder to maintain. And while businesses account for a large portion of dollar volume, most of those blink-of-an-eye transactions involve consumers, says The Clearing House Payments Co., which early Wednesday released the …
Read More »CFPB Sues Experian and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 1/8/25
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued credit reporting agency Experian over claims it unlawfully failed to properly investigate consumer disputes. In a statement, Experian says the lawsuit is without merit. “It is contrary to longstanding regulatory and judicial precedent and is another example of irresponsible overreach by the CFPB. Our legal position …
Read More »Adobe Analytics: Online Holiday Sales Hit A Record High In 2024
Consumers spent a record $241.4 billion online from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31, 2024, an 8.7% increase from the same period a year earlier, Adobe Analytics reports. During this period, single-day online sales totaled more than $4 billion on 15 days, up from 11 days in 2023. Smart phones accounted …
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 »Services and Retail Consumer Spending Boost Fiserv’s Small Business Index
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 …
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 IRS Rings in 2025 With New Reporting Requirements for P2P Networks
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, …
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 »