With the Covid-19 pandemic accelerating consumers’ use of contactless cards and mobile wallets, merchants can expect hackers to target contactless transaction data at the point-of-sale, says Ruston Miles, founder and advisor at Atlanta-based Bluefin Payment Systems LLC. The main point of vulnerability in a contactless environment at the physical point-of-sale …

Peer-to-peer payments networks like Zelle were introduced as a means for consumers to pay each other, but business acceptance now appears to be ramping up along with consumer usage in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Seven major financial institutions are now enabling property owners, home-services companies, and other small …

The big card networks have been introducing a one-click e-commerce checkout and plan to take it overseas by next year, but now a Ripple Labs Inc. executive may beat them to the punch with a single-click capability for Ripple’s XRP cryptocurrency. In what he characterizes as a “personal project,” Ripple director …

The global retail-payment networks Mastercard and Visa are on a tear, acquiring and investing in adjacent payment-opportunity space in networks that can leverage and reinforce their existing franchises.  Their traditional payment schemes are dominant worldwide and near indestructible. While for the foreseeable future they could grow on autopilot, to their …

Thanks to federal programs to deliver stimulus funds to businesses and individuals, the second-quarter slowdown automated clearing house governing body Nacha expected due to Covid-19 didn’t happen. In fact, the massive ACH network saw year-over-year growth in the April-through-June quarter of 7.9%, Nacha reported late Wednesday. The second quarter’s growth …

Taking a page from Square Inc.’s playbook, PayPal Holdings Inc.’s Venmo peer-to-peer payments service is testing what it calls Venmo Business Profiles, a potentially revenue-generating service that enables Venmo users who are sole proprietors of small businesses to sell goods through an affiliated page visible to other Venmo users. Announced …

A deadly disease has proven a boon for some key trends while threatening cash and opening new avenues for fraud. An industry whose closest familiarity with viruses has come from the kind that infects computers has for most of this year had to contend with a pathogen that has sickened …

All card schemes are now on board with the new deadline for the U.S. EMV liability shift in April 2021. So, the time to upgrade—if you haven’t—is now.  Adding EMV chip readers both inside a store and at automated fuel dispensers (AFDs) isn’t intended to be a hardship for gas …

Vesta, a vendor of fraud-fighting technology, said it has received a $125 million growth-capital investment from Goldfinch Partners.Fiserv Inc. said True Sky Credit Union will move to its platform for core account processing, including access to the Zelle peer-to-peer payments network.Mastercard Inc. launched Recovery Insights, a set of data and tools aimed at …

With its merchant business under pressure because of the coronavirus pandemic, Square Inc. is yet again spying new opportunities for its consumer-facing Cash App, whose core feature is person-to-person payments. This time, Square is rolling out regularly scheduled purchases of Bitcoin and stocks for Cash App users. Square chief executive …