May require account to read. Many crypto insiders were pleasantly surprised when the Administration released its executive order on Wednesday, marking the first time the White House has weighed in formally on cryptocurrencies. The order recognized the popularity of cryptocurrencies and directed the U.S. Department of the Treasury and other federal agencies to coordinate their efforts to come up with a regulatory plan. “I am pretty darn optimistic about it,” says Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit who is now a major investor in crypto technology. “I’m grateful we’re at the point where the utility of this tech has proven to be very obvious to all levels of our government.”
When Fiserv Inc. acquired First Data Corp. three years ago, the Brookfield, Wis.-based fintech took on an enormous commitment to the merchant-acquiring business. Late Tuesday, Fiserv’s top management made clear just how big that commitment is, how fast it’s growing, and how big it will get. “We see a clear path to accelerate growth to $10 billion by 2025,” said Frank Bisignano, Fiserv’s chief executive, referring to the unit’s revenue goal. Bisignano and chief financial officer Robert Hau spent nearly an hour spotlighting Fiserv’s merchant-processing business in a special online presentation.
Russia’s two-week-old invasion of Ukraine has rapidly upended a wide range of global industries — from energy to entertainment to fast food. Within the financial services sector, some of the biggest impacts have been on payments companies. Last weekend, Visa, Mastercard, American Express and PayPal all announced bans in Russia. There have also been massive repercussions for Russian banks.
Visa CEO Al Kelly doesn’t usually take his cell phone to church, but he had it there last Sunday when 10 minutes into the service someone pinged him about taking a call from embattled Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. "President Zelenskyy was trying to get ahold of me," Kelly recounted Tuesday on an investors conference webcast. "That was the initial sign to me about the pressure we would feel relative to (the Ukrainian government) trying to pull every stop they could to put pressure on the Russian government."
Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. are preparing to increase the fees that many large merchants pay when they accept consumers’ credit cards. The fee increases—delayed during the past two years because of the pandemic—are scheduled to kick in next month, according to people familiar with the matter and a document viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Interchange fees account for most of the increase. Merchants pay these fees, which are set by the card networks, when shoppers use their cards. The fees go to the bank that issued the card.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange has launched its own payments technology firm. Binance’s new payments firm, Bifinity, will work with payments processor Checkout.com to provide fiat currency on- and off-ramps for users of cryptocurrency exchanges, enabling them to use digital assets for retail purchases. It will, the company hopes, “empower businesses to adopt crypto and reach new audiences with easy, direct fiat-to-crypto transactions.”
Stax, an all-in-one payments platform, announced its latest funding raise of $245 million. Led by sibling co-founders Suneera Madhani, CEO, and Sal Rehmetullah, president, Stax celebrates this significant milestone at a time when less than three percent of venture capital goes to minorities and less than one percent of venture capital goes to businesses with women of color CEOs. “As a minority woman and executive in fintech, I’m no stranger to discrimination and doubt,” said Madhani. “My brother and I built this company from our parents’ home back in 2014.
Savings and investing app Acorns has raised $300 million in a Series F funding round that values the company at nearly $2 billion. The announcement of the raise comes about six weeks after the consumer fintech startup said it was shelving its plans for its $2.2 billion SPAC with Pioneer Merger Corp. in favor of an eventual traditional IPO. New York-based Acorns had last raised more than three years ago — a $105 million Series E round in January of 2019 at an $860 million valuation. CEO Noah Kerner told TechCrunch this week that the company felt it “wasn’t the right time to go public.”
In an Australian first, on-demand delivery platform DoorDash is partnering with Afterpay to offer buy now, pay later finance options on all orders. The market-first partnership will allow users to pay for DoorDash orders, and DashPass subscriptions, across four installments at no additional cost. The partnership is a response to the skyrocketing increase in demand for both services. In just two years, DoorDash has expanded all over Australia, and is the delivery partner of choice for millions of Aussies, while Afterpay’s customer base in ANZ sits at 3.6M.
“This offering will give our corporate clients a convenient way to instantly provision a card into their mobile wallet of choice to pay seamlessly and securely on the go. Marqeta’s tokenization services will be implemented globally in over 40 markets,” said Gonca Latif-Schmitt, Global Head of Citi Commercial Cards. “We’re committed to supporting new use cases and work tirelessly to ensure our corporate clients and their employees around the world can take advantage of the latest payments technologies to help their businesses succeed.”
With its neon signs and pops of teal and mustard yellow, the newly reopened Whole Foods Market in Washington, D.C.’s Glover Park neighborhood is so gorgeous that it’s almost possible to miss the hundreds of small cameras hanging down from the ceiling. But look up and there they are — the digital tentacles that help power parent company Amazon's Just Walk Out cashier-less technology that’s been newly added to the natural and organic store at 2323 Wisconsin Ave. NW.
When Russia invaded Ukraine late last month, brands and businesses scrambled to respond. But soon enough, retailers across the world started to announce they would halt operations—at least temporarily—in Russia. From Apple to Nike to H&M, the list is growing. And consumers are urging more businesses to boycott the country: #BoycottPepsi and #BoycottCocaCola have been trending on Twitter, adding to the pressure to suspend ties with Russia. There are also those that have decided to take a different stance.
Kohl's is under intense pressure from Wall Street raiders and up against stiff competition from Amazon, Target and others. Now it's hoping that overhauling its brand image can beat back those threats. Kohl's (KSS) announced plans Monday to add Sephora mini-shops to roughly 75% of its 1,100 US stores, open 100 new locations at half the size of its traditional outlets in the next four years and increase its popular Kohl's Cash rewards program to 7.5% on purchases, up from 5%.
Walmart’s latest new piece of e-commerce infrastructure will be a facility in Pennsylvania. The discount giant is opening a new 1.8 million-plus-sq.-ft. fulfillment center in Shippensburg, Penn. Slated to open in spring 2022, the facility is expected to create up to 600 permanent, full-time jobs in the southern Pennsylvania region. Unlike distribution centers, which are focused on receiving, storing, and distributing product to Walmart stores, the company’s fulfillment centers are focused on storing millions of items that are picked, packed and shipped directly to customers as soon as the next day.
Inflation is at a 40-year high but isn’t hitting all consumers as hard as top-line numbers might suggest, National Retail Federation Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz said today. Nonetheless, consumer worries about rising prices could become self-fulfilling if workers demand higher wages to compensate and will play a role in the Federal Reserve’s efforts to bring inflation under control. “After decades of relatively low levels, inflation is on everyone’s mind and has been making consumers and businesses miserable as prices have picked up dramatically over the past year,” Kleinhenz said.
“Payments fraud isn’t localized to just one industry or one business — it’s widespread and pervasive. The fraudsters are only getting more creative,” Paramita Bhattacharjee, VP and product line leader at Early Warning Services, LLC said. As the new WEB Debit Account Validation Rule implemented by Nacha took effect last year, account validation practices are fully entering the digital age, readying financial institutions (FIs) and enterprises for real-time payments. At a high level, Bhattacharjee said, the Nacha WEB debit rule was created initially to address concerns of fraud on the automated clearing house (ACH) network.
The global transformation of banking and payments has only accelerated over the past few years, and between web trends and a global pandemic, the industry has seen disruption from all angles. Consumers are digitally connected in almost all facets of their lives — and it’s evident they expect the same from their banks and payment experiences, with consumers overwhelmingly expressing a preference for digital offerings from their financial institutions.
ACI Worldwide, the global leader in mission-critical, real-time payments software, announced the launch of Fraud Scoring Services—an industry-first fraud scoring platform delivering next-generation machine learning capabilities for financial institutions of all sizes to deliver real-time fraud detection and prevention. Underpinned by ACI’s award-winning patented Incremental Learning technology, ACI Fraud Scoring Services (FSS) can enable banks to reduce fraud losses by up to 75 percent.
Consumer prices are rising at their fastest pace in decades — and that inflation has been most acute in household staple items like food, housing and transportation, making it hard to escape the budgetary sting. The Consumer Price Index jumped 7.9% in February relative to a year earlier, the largest 12-month increase since January 1982, the U.S. Department of Labor said Thursday. The index measures price fluctuations across a broad basket of goods and services. A $100 basket a year ago would cost $107.90 today.
Visa announced that the U.S. Spending Momentum Index (SMI) was 109.3 in February (seasonally adjusted), up from 102.4 in January. As COVID-19 case counts fell, consumer spending momentum resumed its robust pace of expansion. The Visa SMI is an economic indicator of the health of consumer spending. When the Visa SMI rises above 100, the consumer spending momentum is strengthening and when it falls below 100, the spending momentum is weakening as fewer consumers are spending more relative to the previous year.
U.S. consumer spending maintained positive momentum in February, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse, which measures in-store and online retail sales across all forms of payment. Overall retail sales excluding auto increased 8.7% year-over-year (YOY) and were up 17.3% compared pre-pandemic spending (2019). This is slightly above January growth levels. When looking across channels, in-store grew 10% in February compared to the same month last year and 8.0% vs. pre-pandemic as consumers resume in-person activity.
Bank of America announced their approximately 67 million clients made $294 billion in total payments during February, a 16% increase over February 2021. This follows a 5% increase in total payments in February 2021 when compared to pre-pandemic levels in February 2020. This marks a continuation of the strong consumer payments and spending observed in January, as well as a record $3.8 trillion in total payments in 2021. “We saw a strong continuation of payment and spending trends in February, another positive sign of the strength of U.S. consumers,” said Mary Hines Droesch, Head of Consumer and Small Business Products at Bank of America.
PPRO, the leading provider of digital payments infrastructure, announced the acquisition of Alpha Fintech, a next-gen payments technology company. The deal will expand PPRO’s offering, strengthen its presence and networks in Asia Pacific (APAC), and allow it to deliver products and services faster to its customers. Alpha Fintech’s cloud-based platform allows for the seamless integration of digital payments products and services, from payment processing and merchant management to risk management, fraud prevention, and data analytics.
Leading specialized payments platform, Paysafe, announces the appointment of J.P. Morgan as its core banking provider. The global financial services firm’s work for Paysafe will be led from its Payments business, which combines cash management, payment solutions and merchant services for corporate clients, financial institutions and governments. The work with J.P. Morgan began with Paysafe’s Integrated and Ecommerce Solutions business, which provides global payment acceptance and processing services for merchants within the UK and Europe, with multi-currency settlements and multi-lingual checkouts.
The Portland Timbers announced they have selected Shift4, the leader in integrated payments and commerce technology, as the official payment solutions partner for the Major League Soccer (MLS) club and Providence Park. The partnership will integrate Shift4’s suite of advanced commerce technologies, including point-of-sale (POS) hardware, mobile ordering, eCommerce, self-service kiosks, and more.
Sezzle, a leader in the Buy Now, Pay Later industry, announces its exclusive partnership with Yapstone, the leading travel payment platform for vacation rentals. Sezzle bridges Yapstone's millions of consumers with the ability to seamlessly finance vacations through its long-term financing product. Given the ever-changing dynamic of the travel industry, Yapstone brings Sezzle on as an imperative solution.
Sphere, a leading provider of end-to-end integrated healthcare payments and security software, announced that its TrustCommerce platform supports Google Pay™ and Apple Pay® within its Epic MyChart integration. Available within Epic App Orchard, the TrustCommerce External Payment Page Integration enables health systems to securely collect patient payments online through MyChart and MyChart Mobile quickly and easily while minimizing PCI scope.
