Affirm Inc.’s shares soared early Thursday as the buy now, pay later platform reported revenue and profit results late Wednesday that topped analyst expectations and may indicate the online and point-of-sale lending trend, which emerged with force during the pandemic, retains plenty of momentum. The positive results also followed Affirm’s …

Apple Inc. is reportedly mulling a return to the buy now, pay later sweepstakes in the United States through a partnership with Zip Co. Ltd, an Australian digital financial-services company. ZIP’s chief executive, Cynthia Scott, acknowledged the two companies are in talks, according to MacDailyNews. Apple abandoned BNPL operations in June …

Paze, the online checkout service from Early Warning Services LLC, says consumers that belong to the Sephora loyalty program can now use it to pay for transactions on the retailer’s Web site. Backed by some of the nation’s largest banks, Paze is an expedited checkout service that includes addresses and …

Cantaloupe Inc. has strengthened its hand in the highly competitive market for payments at sports and entertainment venues with the launch of Suites, an order-management application designed for such venues, on Cantaloupe’s Cheq platform. Cantaloupe developed the new app as a way to make it easier for guests in stadium …

Retailers providing cash-back services at the point of sale fill a void for many consumers who may live in so-called banking deserts, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says in a new report on the service. Some, however, charge a fee for that access, along with other banking hurdles. The Cash-back …

Shift4 Payments Inc. announced Monday it has agreed to acquire Givex Corp., a provider of gift card, e-gift card, loyalty, and POS solutions in an all-cash transaction valued at $200 million Canadian, or $148 million U.S. The acquisition of Toronto-based Givex, which services the restaurant and retail industries, will add …

Ransomware is a sobering item on every organization’s list of things to worry about. New data shows it might be more problematic than ever as the average ransomware demand reached $1,571,667 in the second quarter, more than double the average in the first quarter, according to “Q2 2024 Cyber Threat …

U.S. Bank has acquired Salucro Healthcare Solutions LLC, a 20-year-old provider of payments and billing technology for the health-care industry. Terms were not announced. The bank first invested in Salucro in 2022 and has sold its services through Elavon, the bank’s payments entity, as a product called MedEpay. Relay Payments, a …

Merchants want lower interchange. In their Shangri-la, interchange would be negative, meaning merchants would be paid to accept credit and debit cards. This is not unknown in the real world. For example, Australia’s national debit network for many years had negative interchange. Merchants want to be able to freely surcharge …

Several organizations representing banks and credit unions filed a lawsuit late Thursday challenging Illinois’s Interchange Fee Prohibition Act, which was signed into law June 7. The lawsuit, filed in United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, was brought by the Illinois Bankers Association, The American Bankers Association, …