As part of its strategy to enable faster electronic payments, Dwolla Inc. on Tuesday released an application programming interface to enable real-time payments through The Clearing House Payments Co.’s RTP network. Fort Lee, New Jersey-based Cross River Bank Inc. will provide the processing link to the RTP network. Development of …

Card-based biometric authentication took a step forward with an announcement early Wednesday that a technology from Fingerprint Cards AB has complied with reference specifications set by Mastercard Inc. The compliance is a first for fingerprint authentication on a card, according to Sweden-based Fingerprints and Fime, an organization that consults on …

Continuing its push to make cryptocurrency a mainstream payment option, PayPal Holdings, Inc. on Monday announced that it will accept cryptocurrency at checkout.  The move builds on PayPal’s strategy of increasing the utility of cryptocurrency so it can become a mainstream payment option. PayPal took the first step in that …

Veteran payments practitioners will recall that, “in the beginning,” issuers paid interchange to merchants to incent them to accept credit card payments from the incipient Visa and Mastercard networks.  By the inception of electronic draft capture (circa 1980), that acceptance was growing to a critical-mass level nationwide, and by the late …

The Covid-19 pandemic sent shock waves through nearly every industry—not least the global supply chain. Every piece of the supply chain was impacted, from manufacturing and production to fulfillment. And because supply chains are the backbone of commerce, the implications radiated beyond supply-chain hubs and essential workers to also impact …

Three years’ worth of movement away from cash in the United States has taken place in just 12 months as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to estimates in a report released Tuesday by Square Inc. “It’s not to say we’re ditching cash entirely any time soon, but the …

With the Covid-19 pandemic still imposing a huge financial weight on the nation’s small businesses and families, many legislators are understandably eager to pursue policies they feel will ease that burden. But lawmakers must be careful that they are looking at policies that really will help. Unfortunately, some sectors—in this …

Thanks to the proliferation of such financial-service technologies as mobile wallets and peer-to-peer and e-cash payments, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, financial-technology providers are closing the gap on unbanked and underbanked consumers’ access to financial services, according to a report from the Electronic Transactions Association. One example cited in the …

Like many of its rivals, Fiserv Inc. is looking for ways to prosper as hope begins to rise for a recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic that has ravaged much of the world. Tuesday afternoon, the Brookfield, Wis.-based payments provider revealed a promising report card for its fourth-quarter performance, with high-flying …

More than a year has passed since three giant mergers promised to change the payments world. Change has come, but not where many expected to see it. Alone, any of the six companies involved in the round of megamergers in 2019 is huge. Recall that Global Payments Inc. acquired Total …