News

February, 2023

• 3 February

  Sightline Brands Its Proprietary Gaming Card With Visa

  

  With sports betting and casino gambling steadily gaining prominence as a payments market, payment processors are increasingly jumping on the opportunities the market presents. In the latest development, gaming-payments specialist Sightline Payments said it will offer its Play+ card, which has attracted 1.5 million users so far, as a Visa-branded …
• 3 February

  Amazon’s 2022 Performance And Other Digital Transactions News briefs from 2/3/23

  

  Amazon.com Inc. reported net sales of $514 billion for 2022, up 9% over 2021, excluding an impact from changes in foreign-exchange rates. Sales in the North American market grew 13% over 2021, to $315.9 billion. The company recorded an operating loss of $2.8 billion in North America, swinging from a positive …
• 2 February

  As Sellers’ Fees Rise, Satisfaction With Merchant Service Providers Declines, J.D. Power Finds

  

  Merchant satisfaction with payment processors has dwindled in the past year, as sellers cope with the impact of inflation on their processing costs as well as on their business in general, according to J.D. Power’s 2023 U.S. Merchant Services Satisfaction Study. The merchant satisfaction score for merchant-services providers totaled 853, …
• 2 February

  Malware Emerges to Force Contactless Users to Insert Their Card Instead

  Contactless payments have taken off in the United States and other markets in recent years, but now a piece of malware has emerged that can block wave-and-pay or tap-to-pay transactions and force users to insert their cards in a terminal instead, according to a new report by the Moscow-based global …
• 2 February

  Zelle for Small Business And Other Digital Transactions News briefs from 2/2/23

  

  Citizens Financial Group Inc. has launched the Zelle peer-to-peer payments service for the bank’s small-business customers. U.S.-based Clickatell said it has deployed its Chat 2 Pay service with a pay-by-link capability for FlySafair, a South African airline for mobile payments via’s FlySafair’s WhatsApp channel. Payments provider Lightspeed Commerce Inc. announced it processed $22.4 billion in volume for …
• 1 February

  The CFPB Proposes a Dramatic Cut in Fees for Credit Card Late Payments

  

  Observers have warned that an activist Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is likely to act on multiple fronts that involve the payments industry. Early Wednesday it released its latest proposal, a move to cut the $12 billion it estimates consumers pay annually in credit card late fees. While the proposal could …
• 1 February

  P97 Networks Taps Visa’s Token Technology For In-Car Payments

  

  P97 Networks, a provider of cloud-based mobile-commerce technology to convenience stores, gas stations, and the automotive industry, is teaming with Visa Inc. to deploy Visa’s token technology as a way to reduce friction with in-car payments, as well as create new customer experiences for mobile-wallet users. P97 will use Visa’s …
• 1 February

  Ingenico Adopts Splitit BNPL And Other Digital Transactions News briefs from 2/1/23

  

  Point-of-sale technology provider Ingenico is working with buy now, pay later specialist Splitit to offer BNPL at the physical checkout using Ingenico’s payments-platform-as-a-service technology. Block Inc.’s Afterpay buy now, pay later service said it will enable access for users to New York Fashion Week beginning Feb. 11 and running for four days. Afterpay is …

January, 2023

• 31 January

  Cash App’s Latest Feature Aims to Help Consumers Meet Their Savings Goals

  

  Block Inc.’s Cash App unit says it is attempting to make it easier for consumers to salt away money with the introduction of Cash App Savings. The new feature allows Cash App users to deposit savings into a separate account within the app, build additional savings by rounding up their …
• 31 January

  Musk Is Engineering a Return to Payments Via Twitter, Reports Say

  

  Elon Musk helped found what became PayPal back at the turn of the century, and now it appears he is moving on an ambition he outlined months ago to add a payments feature to Twitter, the social-media platform he paid $44 billion to acquire in October. The San Francisco-based company …