British telecommunications giant Vodafone Group Plc has become the latest Libra participant to withdraw from the controversial digital-currency project initiated by Facebook Inc., Reuters reported. Other early participants that have withdrawn include Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Stripe, and eBay.With an eye on expanding its Bitcoin services, merchant processor Square Inc. said it is developing what it calls …

Consumers spent 7% more on gift cards during the 2019 holiday shopping season than in the same period in 2018, doubling the 3.4% gain seen in 2018 over 2017, according to data from prepaid program manager Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc., which did not release absolute spending numbers.The U.S. Treasury Department’s Bureau …

In its latest pricing change, Square Inc. disclosed Tuesday that it will raise the cost of instant and same-day transfers from its merchants’ Square balances to their bank accounts to 1.5% per transfer from the previous rate of 1%. The change, announced on Square’s blog, took effect Tuesday for new …

Like their American cousins, Canadians are rapidly adopting newer payment methods. In fact, they’re doing so even faster than U.S. consumers in some respects. The report, “Canadian Payment Methods and Trends: 2019,” released last week by Payments Canada, says contactless payments grew 30% year-over-year in 2018. Card- and mobile-based contactless …

Foundational changes in payments — the emergence of fintechs, a mobile-first approach by consumers, and the digitization of payment methods — are altering vital relationships in the industry. Two thousand twenty may be the year that many of the underlying changes various payments players have made in the last few …

Google Inc. is making a play for the heart of payments—the checking account—and some observers see the strategy’s first fruit as likely to be a move into a massive market long controlled by banks and service providers. “It’s huge,” Krista Tedder, director of payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, says …

Now that Google Inc. is making a play for the heart of payments—the checking account—some observers see the strategy’s first fruit as likely to be a move into a massive market long controlled by banks and service providers. “It’s huge,” Krista Tedder, director of payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, …

Twenty European banks are working on setting up a pan-European payment system to challenge Visa, Mastercard and technology companies such as Google and PayPal, according to press reports. The project is code-named PEPSI, for Pan European Payment System Initiative.In a development that signals an opening in China’s long-protected payments environment, Chinese mobile-payment giants …

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has been seeking lately to differentiate its 4-year-old Samsung Pay mobile payments service, and on Monday came its latest gambit: an integration with Curve 1 LTD, a London-based startup that allows cardholders to consolidate all of their Mastercard and Visa cards into a single card or …

What’s keeping you up at night? If you said nothing, you’re lucky. Here’s a list of the biggest issues troubling most payments executives today. We live in a world full of tribulation and turbulence, and the payments business is no exception. Herewith, we offer our annual catalog of the 10 …