Betting that consumer demand to use cryptocurrency as a payment vehicle will rise over the long term, payments provider The OLB Group Inc. announced Wednesday that its SecurePay payment gateway will support the acceptance of Bitcoin and other digital currencies at the point of sale regardless of the merchant platform. …

Amara’s Law, coined by Stanford computer scientist Roy Amara, says we tend to overestimate the impact of a new technology in the short run, but underestimate it in the long run. So it was with the Internet and mobile phones. So it’s likely to be with digital fiat currencies.  Since …

New national systems, the card networks, and blockchain operations are all piling into real-time payments. What’s going on, and why? If the travails of 2020 had any advantages, they lay in how the struggle with the pandemic offered opportunities to demonstrate the vital utility of technologies like contactless payments and …

Startup Slide Mobile is betting that consumer’s love of rewards, coupled with the growing momentum behind cryptocurrency as a contactless payment option during the Covid-19 pandemic, will entice more consumers to use its mobile-payments app. Slide announced this week it is partnering with BitPay Inc., an Atlanta-based processor that offers …

Processor Stripe Inc. launched Stripe Treasury, a banking-as-a-service platform for its merchants, which can open Stripe Balance business accounts. Stripe is working with Evolve Bank & Trust on the service. Merchants can open interest-bearing accounts eligible for FDIC insurance in minutes. Commerce platform Shopify Inc. is one of the first to offer …

The Libra Association, the organization behind the Libra cryptocurrency project, said it is renaming itself Diem, Latin for “day.” Acknowledging pressure from governments and regulators worldwide, the association this spring changed course on several key strategies, setting out new plans for single-currency stablecoins and a stronger compliance regime.Commerce platform Shopify Inc. said its merchants had …

Multiple real-time services may flourish, but don’t discount the Fed’s ability to corner volume. Over the last several decades, there has been a crescendo of interest from regulators and the industry worldwide in real-time interbank payments. Instant interbank payments displace batch automated clearing house transfers and enable new use cases, …

One of the most aggressive—and worrisome—central bank digital currency models is a proposal from law professors Morgan Ricks and John Crawford and lawyer and former regulator Lev Menand that the Fed provide direct banking “FedAccounts” to consumers and businesses. It’s intended to improve payments efficiency and reduce the number of …

Bitcoin may be the most popular cryptocurrency, but acceptance of any digital currency is limited to just a few thousand merchants. Crypto processor BitPay Inc. on Thursday introduced a solution with a service that lets users spend their holdings via a prepaid Mastercard that features an EMV chip and contactless capability. …

The guide has a slightly different name now, but the same purpose—to seek out and describe the nonbank players, apart from the big networks, that are rewriting the rules for the digital exchange of value. Since 2004, Digital Transactions has traced the course of payments innovation through its nimblest practitioners—the …