Sales of gift cards in the United States remained steady in 2021, with 73% of consumers purchasing the same number of cards, or more, compared to a year earlier, says a report from Fiserv Inc.  Online merchants were the biggest beneficiaries, with 53% of respondents saying they purchased a gift …

When it comes to fast growth, it doesn’t hurt to have huge merchant platforms like Amazon.com Inc. and Shopify Inc. in your corner, a proposition Affirm Inc. underscored late Thursday as it reported huge increases in merchandise volume, active users, and other indicators. “We feel great about our progress,” said …

Consumers have turned to mobile and desktop buying in record numbers. Merchants and processors are figuring out how to sustain the surge. E-commerce has been booming since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and is showing no signs of slowing down. In 2021, online consumer spending totaled a record $855 …

It’s the hottest trend in online credit. The rewards outweigh the risks for most consumers and merchants. Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) is a payment option that allows customers to make purchases at stores and online without paying the complete amount upfront. Similar to the layaway programs of the past, BNPL …

Food-ordering and delivery provider Waitr Holdings Inc. said it has entered into a non-binding letter of intent to acquire Retail Innovation Labs Inc., known as Cova, a provider of point-of-sale software for cannabis dispensaries. The deal calls for a price of $90 million in cash and stock.Agilysys Inc., a provider of payments …

The Covid-19 pandemic has proven to be a huge boon for e-commerce, but it has come at a cost for merchants in the form of higher chargebacks. The higher level of chargebacks is not just consumers returning items for legitimate reasons, it’s also being fueled by consumers perpetrating friendly fraud.  …

Despite consumers’ intentions to spend more on gifts this holiday season than in 2020, concerns about ongoing shipping delays and low product inventories are making gift cards a more attractive gift option.  Indeed, 33% of consumers say they would purchase a gift card if they were unable to get a …

To make it more convenient for its customers to send money using Zelle, the major peer-to-peer payment network operated by Early Warning Services LLC, Bank of America Corp. has developed a Zelle widget that can be added on the home screen of a mobile device. The widget will take BofA …

Buy now, pay later specialist Splitit Payments Ltd. said its merchant sales volume for the first two months of the fourth quarter totaled $94 million, a 52% increase quarter-over-quarter and a 61% increase year-over-year. Splitit reported $11 million in merchant sales volume across the holiday shopping weekend, including Black Friday and Cyber …

Cyber Monday 2021 is in the books, and a number of lessons have emerged from the biggest online-shopping day of the year regarding how consumers are spending. They didn’t use their mobile phones as much as expected, buy now, pay later picked up some momentum, and inflation asserted itself in …