Shift4 Payments dazzled the payments industry and Wall Street with its June initial public offering. What do recent processor IPOs say about the prospects for payments companies? No investment in the stock market is a sure winner, but payments investments often prove to be better than others. On June 4, …

Big moves by Visa and Mastercard have thrust data aggregators into the spotlight just as the focus of payments is expanding and the aggregation model is modernizing. Like most businesses, the payments world has been upended by the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on buyers and sellers alike. But just …

As merchants, consumers, and payments providers wrestle with the Covid-19 pandemic, one thing is certain: Online fraudsters are as relentless—and opportunistic—as ever. If little else, this year has proven that forecasts are grounded only in the moment they are made. No one could have foreseen in 2019 the impact of …

Covid-19 has changed shopping and payments behavior, and a big question facing the industry is: How long will those changes last? Most conversations about the pandemic start with, “When things get back to normal.” But all signs point to a new normal rather than a return to a pre-pandemic state. …

PayPal Holdings Inc. is expanding its portfolio of installment-payment options by introducing Pay in 4, a short-term financing program. PayPal says the new option, which allows consumers to pay for a purchase over four interest-free payments, can help merchants drive customer conversions, hike revenue, and enhance loyalty without taking on additional …

Online criminals are now launching most of their phishing attacks from domains secured by the HTTPS protocol—and they’re hijacking the sites they need to do it, according to the latest report from the Anti-Phishing Working Group, a security-industry organization that tracks the crime. Some 77.6% of phishing sites in the …

It’s become a common assertion in the payments business that consumers are turning to online sites for shopping as they contend with the various impacts of Covid-19. Now government data indicates just how well-founded that assertion is. E-commerce dollar volume in the second quarter totaled $211.5 billion, up 32% from …

Refused transactions are frustrating enough for cardholders and merchants, but during a pandemic they could be especially nerve-wracking. Visa Inc. on Wednesday announced a new service for stand-in processing that the payments network says should yield faster and more accurate results when issuers’ systems are down. The new Smarter STIP …

With less than a year to go before gas stations are scheduled to become EMV-compliant at the pump, readiness among fuel merchants remains uneven. A recent study by Naples, Fla.-based ACI Worldwide reveals 47% of major petroleum merchants remain unprepared to meet the deadline and 20% are still in the …

Transaction volumes globally for digital tickets for air and rail travel and for events will reach 12.7 billion this year and will pass pre-Covid levels by 2022 at 32 billion, according to a report from Juniper Research. Transportation ticketing, however, is recovering more slowly, with transaction values not expected to reach pre-Covid …