It is generally accepted that the pandemic energized online commerce, but now research is starting to emerge showing just how extensive that effect has been. “Global Payment Cards Data and Forecasts to 2026,” a report released Wednesday by the London-based research firm RBR, indicates e-commerce card spending came to $7.7 …

Payments-technology provider Paddle announced it has acquired ProfitWell, a vendor of software for subscription metrics and retention automation. The deal is valued at more than $200 million in cash and equity.Apple Inc.’s tap-to-pay on iPhone is rolling out to its retail stores today, according to a Twitter post from Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman. The …

The CFPB director should stop imposing politics on payments and stick to his remit. Rohit Chopra, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in March shared his conjured alternative-payments universe with politically simpatico CNBC. Relishing his celebrity, Chopra held forth on inflation, payment-system competition and fees, and cryptocurrency risk. The …

Creative, norm-breaking advances in payments can happen in the strangest places. Just ask BIM Networks, Discover—and the ACH. Another $13 billion poured into the top 250 fintech startups last year as investors doubled down on the business potential of disrupting staid financial-services providers and the moribund card-payments infrastructure. But where’s …

The return of travel following the impact of the pandemic is testing airlines in various ways, not the least of which is their openness to payment methods beyond cards in what for them is a global market. That new emphasis, combined with a need to work with multiple acquirers, is …

The European Union on Thursday advanced legislation to curb the power of tech companies, legislation that would force them to provide more billing options to consumers on their highly popular app stores. In related news, Google and the big music streaming service Spotify this week announced Spotify users with Android …

The Visa Acceptance Cloud will virtualize POS terminals. What will that mean for acquirers and merchants? The dawn of a new era for point-of-sale terminals may be upon the payments industry with the announcement earlier this year of the Visa Acceptance Cloud. The platform aims to move to a cloud-based …

Stripe Inc. announced Monday a five-year deal with Ford Credit, Ford Motor Company’s financial-services arm, to develop new e-commerce applications for Ford customers and dealers in North America and Europe. The agreement also includes processing payments for the automaker’s dealer network and providing Ford dealers with an improved payment-acceptance platform.  …

As mobile-wallet technology matures, marketers are starting to look at ways to reach consumers with content that stays in the wallet as permanently as a credit or debit card. The latest move in this direction emerged Wednesday with the unveiling of “Mobile Wallet as a Channel,” a service that lets …

Online checkouts remain a challenge for many merchants as 40% report cart abandonment as more than a minor issue and 41% say fraudulent transactions have risen since the pandemic set in, according to Paysafe Ltd.’s “Lost in Transaction” report.PayPal Holdings Inc. said merchants on the Wix.com Ltd. e-commerce platform can offer …