Mastercard Inc. is teaming with videogame-commerce company Xsolla in an effort to smooth online-gaming checkouts by enabling new payment options for Xsolla’s videogame platform, the card network said. Mastercard cardholders will be able pay for gaming purchasing using credit card loyalty points from participating merchants and issuers. They can also …
Read More »Affirm Cuts 19% of Its Workforce As Heightened Interest Rates Buffet Its Results
The buy now, pay later trend has lifted a wide range of companies specializing in these online and point-of-sale installment-payment products, not least Affirm Holdings Inc. But late on Wednesday the 11-year-old company reported subpar results for its December quarter and announced it is dismissing 19% of its workforce. The …
Read More »BofA’s 608 Patents in 2022 And Other Digital Transactions News briefs from 2/9/23
Bank of America Corp. said the 608 patents it received in 2022 was a record number and was 19% more than in 2021, with grants covering areas such as mobile banking and payments, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and other technologies. Kasheesh, a digital payments platform than enables consumers to split payments …
Read More »Visa Rolls Out Incentives for Small Businesses To Use Its Business Card And Accept Digital Payments
Seeking to entice small businesses to pay for purchases using their Visa business card, Visa Inc. on Wednesday launched Visa SavingsEdge, a program that rewards small businesses that have Visa business cards with savings and discounts on business-related services from about 60 merchants. The rewards and incentives include everyday savings …
Read More »The Potential to Choose Foreign Networks Worries Backers of Credit Card Choice
A bill designed to allow merchants to have a choice of networks for routing credit card transactions failed to pass last year, but now international tensions could affect the proposed law’s prospects in the new Congress. The bill, called the Credit Card Competition Act, would mandate that merchants have a …
Read More »What Drives Cart Abandonment And Other Digital Transactions News briefs from 2/8/23
Cost surprises at checkout are the leading cause of cart abandonment, with 57% of consumers saying they walked away from checkout at least once in the past year because of unexpected delivery costs, according to a wide-ranging shopping report released by point-of-sale technology provider Verifone Inc., which surveyed 995 respondents globally. Price …
Read More »Fiserv “Is Better Than the Sum of Its Parts,” Its CEO Says As It Finishes ‘22 With Double-Digit Growth
Merchant acceptance, payments, and network and financial technology were the key pillars propelling Fiserv Inc.’s better -than-expected organic growth during the fourth quarter and for fiscal year 2022. Organic revenue growth—growth apart from recent acquisitions—for the three core segments of Fiserv’s business increased 17%, 9%, and 5%, respectively, compared to …
Read More »Real-Time Payments Tee up in Separate Sionic And Oracle Offerings
Real-time payments are getting more attention in financial services, and vendors are quickly enabling the faster-payment capability. Among the latest to do so is Sionic Corp., with its suite of services that includes its Verified Rapid Payments, and Oracle Corp., with a new set of cloud-based banking services. Atlanta-based Sionic …
Read More »Merchants Target China And Other Digital Transactions News briefs from 2/7/23
The Merchants Payments Coalition released a letter it sent to the House Financial Services Committee arguing the Credit Card Competition Act should be enacted to block what the merchant-advocacy group calls a “national security threat” from China UnionPay, a China-based credit card network. The House committee has scheduled a hearing for this morning on “Combatting the …
Read More »The U.S. Payments Forum Releases a Paper to Help Boost Sellers’ Adoption of PINless Debit
Seeking to improve merchant adoption of PINless debit transactions, the U.S. Payments Forum Monday released a white paper detailing the potential obstacles to PINless debit implementation in the United States and how they can be overcome. One advantage of PINless debit transactions is that they can be processed faster than PIN-based debit transactions, …
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