Buy now, pay later specialist Klarna AB raised $1 billion in an oversubscribed equity funding round that pegged the company’s valuation at $31 billion. Major U.S. clients include Macys, Etsy, Sephora, Ralph Lauren, and Urban Outfitters.In related news, BNPL provider Splitit Payments Ltd. announced its merchant sales volume increased almost 180% in 2020 to …

By shifting stores and consumers to contactless payment, the pandemic made it easier to stop fraud.  One year into a global pandemic, and our lives will never be the same. The way we work, shop, travel, and entertain ourselves have all seen major changes during a year of living surrounded …

There has now been a year of pandemic, but also of regulation, litigation, and malfeasance in the payments business. What’s going on, and has anything really changed? Like everyone else in the “Time of Covid,” the people of payments woke up just about every day last year wondering what new …

CardX LLC, a surcharging-services provider, can now add another state to the list of places where it can do business. A federal judge ruled Thursday surcharging cannot be prohibited in Kansas. The decision leaves just Colorado, Massachusetts, and Connecticut with outright no-surcharge rules on the books. Filed May 29, 2020, …

Payment platform provider NMI’s acquisition of gateway provider USAePay for an undisclosed sum is based on the rationale that it better positions NMI to meet merchants’ need for connected, multichannel payment technology, which has become especially valuable in the face of the pandemic. It also bolsters NMI’s economies of scale. …

MoneyGram International Inc. reported its digital business generated $57.4 million in the fourth quarter, up 79% year-over-year. Real-time transfers via Visa Direct transactions grew 650%. Meanwhile, Rising Bank, a division of Midwest BankCentre, has added Zelle, a person-to-person payments service, to its product roster. Dallas-based MoneyGram said MoneyGram Online, its …

As digital commerce sees greater consumer adoption, the impact is being felt at the point of sale. Retailers’ top priority for 2021 is to grow or enhance their digital-commerce efforts, with 85% citing this ambition in the 2021 POS & Customer Engagement Survey Report released this week by Retail Consulting …

Now that criminals have milked the bulk of their opportunities related to pandemic relief efforts, they are turning their attention back to their old standby, payments-related fraud. Not surprisingly, their target of choice is e-commerce, which has rocketed due to restrictions on the number of consumers allowed in physical stores and …

The FedNow real-time payment service will launch commercially in 2023, the Federal Reserve said, narrowing the launch date from the 2023-24 timing it has projected since announcing the project in 2019.Fuel retailer Valero Energy Corp. said it is working with payments-technology provider P97 Networks to launch a mobile app that allows users to activate …

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 …