Social Finance Inc. said it will use the special purpose acquisition tool to become a publicly traded company. Known as SoFi, the company will merge with Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. V, a SPAC, to enter the public market. SoFi’s equity value is pegged at $8.65 billion in the deal. SoFi, which …

NCR Corp. said it acquired Freshop, a grocery e-commerce services provider. Terms were not disclosed. NCR estimates that buy online, pick up in store shopping will increase 25% per year through 2025.Payment Alliance International said it acquired the ATM portfolio of B & B Music & Video, consisting of 580 company-owned and …

An executive order by President Donald Trump banning a pair of major Chinese payments apps comes in the waning days of his administration and may leave more questions than it answers, observers say. The order, issued Tuesday, prohibits transactions on eight China-based apps, including the hugely popular Alipay and WeChat …

Payments platform Qualpay said it is now supporting Google Pay transactions in recognition of increasing consumer usage of mobile wallets.Payments-technology provider Cardknox launched a beta version of its partner portal, intended for the use of sales partners and independent sales vendors to onboard and manage merchant-processing accounts.Digital-payments provider Payrailz has launched Action Insights, a service intended …

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 …

In the week before and the week of Christmas, consumers markedly increased their use of mobile wallets, with mobile wallets loaded with a debit card increasing 79.2% from the same weeks a year ago, according to the Tracking Transaction Trends report from PSCU, a credit union service organization. Use of mobile …

Buy now, pay later provider Afterpay Ltd. said users’ average ticket increased 30% in the fourth quarter compared to the same period in 2019.Affirm Inc. completed its acquisition of PayBright, a buy now, pay later provider in Canada.PayPal Holdings Inc. announced a check cashing feature for select Venmo app users. This enables them to have funds …

Count down the 10 most popular stories published in the Digital Transactions News daily newsletter in 2020. #10 Processor Paya Will Go Public Via a So-Called SPAC Merger (Aug. 3) #9 Feeling Heat, Square Explains Its New Reserve Policy (June 23) #8 After Beating Wells Fargo Twice in Court, USAA …

New technologies like pay-by-link and click-to-pay will get a workout this year. With 2020 unlike any other year in our history, it is certainly challenging to predict what the future may hold. One thing is clear, though. There has been an extreme shift in consumer behavior, and that shift is …

With all the changes coming to Washington D.C., the payments industry’s focus will largely be on one appointment: the new director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The current director, Kathy Kraninger, was appointed by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the Senate in December 2018 to serve a five-year …