E-commerce sales in the United States during the recently completed holiday shopping season—Nov. 1 through Dec. 31— totaled $211.7 billion, a 3.5% increase from the same period a year ago, according to Adobe Inc. The total set a record for holiday-season e-commerce sales, while the year-over-year increase was larger than …
Read More »Search Results for: covid
Is BNPL Risk Overstated? New Data Suggests It Isn’t
One impression of consumers who use buy now, pay later services is that they may not be as financially literate as others. New data from Capterra, a software reviews and selection platform, indicate that picture may not be entirely accurate. In Arlington, Va.-based Capterra’s “2022 Buy Now, Pay Later Survey,” …
Read More »Global Card Networks Are Thriving, Though Domestic Systems Could Pose a Threat
The number of card-accepting merchant locations around the world reached a record high of 88 million in 2021, up 2% over 2020 as measures to fight the pandemic helped stoke consumer usage of payment cards rather than alternatives like cash, according to research released Monday by London-based research firm RBR. …
Read More »How Consumers Are Steadily Adopting Online And Mobile Channels for Bill Pay
Digital bill payment has become table stakes for billers as consumers have increasingly gravitated toward paying their bills through mobile and online channels the past two years, according to a recent survey by EngageSmart, a provider of a customer-engagement and payment applications. The study reveals that 50% of respondents say …
Read More »Looking to Sharpen Its Edge in Merchant Services, NMI Acquires Agreement Express’s Payments Assets
Payment platform provider NMI has acquired Agreement Express Inc.’s merchant onboarding, underwriting, and monitoring technologies. The acquisition, which is for the payments portion of Agreement Express’s total business, is aimed at allowing NMI to provide integrated software vendors, independent sales organizations, and fintechs with tools that can speed up merchant …
Read More »Payment Card Routing Is All Politics
The real winners from the Fed’s latest debit card routing rule aren’t the merchants. And they certainly aren’t the banks. Guess who? In the last decade, the flow of funds across debit card networks has curiously become a concern of Congress and the Federal Reserve. It all began with the …
Read More »Contactless: Far From Tapped Out
The Covid-19 pandemic was a strong tailwind for the adoption of contactless payments. Two years later, the momentum is still there but challenges remain. Whether it’s the convenience of not dipping a card into a POS terminal or speedier transactions at the point-of-sale, consumers and merchants continue to embrace contactless …
Read More »Google Wallet Expands Its Reach Across Countries And Devices
Months after the introduction of Google Wallet, Alphabet Inc. announced late Tuesday it is expanding the availability of the digital wallet to 12 more countries, bringing the total number of countries where the wallet is available to 57. Users will now also be able to make the wallet available on …
Read More »Toast Exceeds $100 Billion in Annualized Volume As Eateries Equip for a Post-Pandemic Era
Few merchant markets are more competitive these days than hospitality, particularly restaurants, a state of affairs that only gained intensity with the onset of the pandemic. But at the same time, the drive among eateries to install modern payment-processing technology has lent impetus to many point-of-sale technology providers and processors …
Read More »E-Commerce Merchants Can Expect a Better Holiday Season This Year, ACI Predicts
Consumers are projected to be shopping more online this holiday shopping season, compared to the same period a year ago. Data released Tuesday by payments-technology provider ACI Worldwide Inc. projects a 15% increase in e-commerce transactions from October through December, compared to the same period in 2021. The projected increase …
Read More »