With fintechs nipping at their heels, the payment card networks are buying up companies big and small in a range of industries. How far will the networks venture beyond their core business—and at what price? Mergers and acquisitions tend to come in fits and starts, and lately M&A activity involving …

From back offices to the point of sale, and from digital wallets to the blockchain, fintechs are fomenting a revolution in loyalty and rewards. Here’s how that’s playing out—and where it’s heading. By Maria Arminio and Bo Berg Bank and merchant card issuers are looking for ways to distinguish their …

Arxan Technologies, an application-security provider, said research it commissioned from Aite Group found 80 e-commerce sites that were actively compromised by groups using Magecart card-skimming technology. Magecart can infect e-commerce sites, without detection for long periods, and steal personal and financial information.Fitbit Inc. launched a new smart watch, Fitbit Versa 2, …

Installment lending at the point of sale has drawn both startups and established companies, including banks, in recent years, but who among consumers finds that offer most attractive? The answer, according to New York City-based Auriemma Research, is consumers who pay with debit cards exclusively or say they prefer to. …

Fast, frictionless credit at the point of purchase, delivered via mobile apps, threatens to sideline banks. It won’t—if they look upon new fintechs as friends rather than foes. We increasingly use smart phones to make contactless payments and apps to collect rewards. And now, we use new and fast-growing short-term …

Consumer-payments services are starting to garner attention among businesses, with 76% of banks having corporate customers asking for automated business-to-consumer payment services. That’s the word from Bottomline Technologies Inc. in its 2019 B2B Payments and Working Capital Management Strategies Survey, released this week. The survey of more than 300 financial …

The gravitational pull toward M&A is claiming some of the industry’s biggest merchant processors. Are more mega-deals inevitable? There’s nothing new about mergers and acquisitions in the merchant-processing business. These combinations have been going on for years, after all, as acquirers seek to penetrate new markets or bulk up for …

Talk about an anticlimax. Did anyone really notice that on April 1 the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s long-dreaded diktat regulating the prepaid industry finally took effect? We took note of the event, of course, in our daily news service, Digital Transactions News, because that’s our job. But though we bent …

A day long dreaded by the U.S. payments industry came and went on Monday with little fanfare and not much more gnashing of teeth. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s voluminous prepaid card rule finally took effect with sweeping provisions governing matters ranging from fee disclosures to error-resolution rights to consumers’ …

Neither a borrower nor a lender be, counseled Shakespeare’s Polonius. He never met today’s raft of tech-based creditors serving merchants eager to pump out sales. Stores have been offering credit to customers for at least a century. But the latest twist is to offer credit while the customer is at …