Executive Interview with LegitScript's CEO, Scott Roth
In this interview we sat down with Scott Roth, CEO of LegitScript, to learn how his company makes the internet and online payments safer for businesses and their customers. continue reading →
The proposed Credit Card Competition Act failed to become part of a U.S. defense spending bill this week, but backers of the legislation expect to have another chance to attach it to the military bill next month. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Roger Marshall (R-KS), sponsors of the card competition legislation, were hopeful they could tack the legislation onto the National Defense Authorization Act. It could have been a surefire way to help their bill pass through the chamber because the defense funding legislation is a must-pass bill every year.
Apple is taking a big step toward offering more banking services to its customers. The company announced today it’s partnering with Goldman Sachs to soon launch a new Savings account feature for its Apple Card credit cardholders which will allow them to save and grow their “Daily Cash” — the cashback rewards that are earned from their Apple Card purchases. In the months ahead, Apple says cardholders will be able to automatically save this cash in a new, high-yield Savings account from partner Goldman Sachs which is accessible with Apple Wallet.
PayPal Holdings, Inc. announced the rollout of the PayPal Zettle Terminal to small businesses in the U.S. following its launch in European markets last year. Terminal is an all-in-one point-of-sale solution that offers increased mobility in-store for small businesses. With its sleek design, Terminal is ready to go right out of the box, with no need for a second device to pair it with. Featuring a touchscreen, this digital in-store solution is easy to set up and use, offering small businesses simplicity, speed, and mobility.
Verse, a European mobile payments provider owned by Jack Dorsey’s $50 billion fintech giant Block, has been told by its financial regulator to address concerns about money laundering and checks on the identities of users. If it doesn’t, it risks a penalty, including a fine, Forbes has learned. Acquired by Block in 2020, Barcelona-based Verse is much the same as Cash App, the payments company under which it operates, providing a quick and easy way to transfer funds over a mobile device.
The Biden administration's efforts to help small-business owners get better access to capital could open up a big opportunity for fintech lenders. The Small Business Administration will soon propose a rule change that could lift a 40-year moratorium on new licenses for nonbanks — including fintechs — to lend through its largest loan program. The plan was revealed last week in a list of policy initiatives from Vice President Kamala Harris aimed at advancing racial equity in small-business ownership.
To help restaurants manage catering and wholesale orders with their in-person, takeout, and delivery business while using one POS system, Toast Inc. has launched Toast Invoicing. The new application, developed in response to what Toast sees as restaurants’ growing catering business, will eliminate the need for a separate POS system, the company says. To illustrate how much of a mainstay catering has become for restaurants Toast cites a recent survey of 956 restaurant decision-makers that revealed 72% offer catering in addition to in-restaurant dining.
t has been more than a year since El Salvador made history by becoming the first country to make bitcoin legal tender, and so far, 37-year-old resident Edgardo Acevedo has found the nationwide crypto experiment to be relatively anticlimactic. “I don’t think anything has changed, except that the country is more recognized than before, but the economic life of Salvadorans remains the same or worse than a few years ago,” said Acevedo, a development engineer working in the capital city of San Salvador.
Google said Tuesday that it will rely on Coinbase to start letting some customers pay for cloud services with cryptocurrencies early in 2023, while Coinbase said it would draw on Google’s cloud infrastructure. Coinbase shares rose as much as 8.4% in Tuesday’s trading session, although the stock is still down over 70% for the year. The deal, announced at Google’s Cloud Next conference, might succeed in luring cutting-edge companies to Google in a fierce, fast-growing market, where Google’s top competitors do not currently permit clients to pay with digital currencies.
May require account to read. The annual Sibos conference is the Davos of the payments industry. The latest opus in Amsterdam, attended by 10,000 delegates from October 10th to 13th, seemed stuck between the future and the past. Sessions on the metaverse and the digital euro drew crowds. But so did a barber stall and arcade games lit by 1980s-style neon lights. Next to an exhibitor displaying a “net-zero” countdown to 2050, measured in milliseconds, financial plumbers mulled decade-old issues, from clunky trade finance to costly cross-border payments.
Youth-focused financial technology company Step has raised up to $300 million in debt funding led by Triplepoint Capital and Evolve Bank & Trust. The fresh capital will go toward building out the Step infrastructure and the launch of new products, according to the press release. Step offers a secure Visa card that helps people under the age of 18 build up their credit history. With the funding round, Step launched a crypto investing feature that allows teens, with the permission of a parent or guardian, to buy and sell bitcoin (BTC) and receive Visa rewards in crypto denominations.
An uncertain economic environment and a fall version of Amazon Prime Day may impact online holiday sales in 2022. U.S. online holiday sales are expected to increase 2.5% to $209.7 billion from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31, 2022, according to Adobe's online shopping forecast for the 2022 holiday season. By contrast, during the 2021 holiday shopping season, Adobe measured $204.5 billion spent online (growing 8.6% year-over-year), with consumers at that time uncertain about returning to physical stores due to lingering pandemic concerns.
America’s retail chains have proven surprisingly strong during the pandemic. But a slowing economy may bring a fresh wave of store closings and bankruptcies. Retailers that sell mostly discretionary goods, cater to middle and lower-income consumers and have weak balance sheets will be most vulnerable. Bed Bath & Beyond, Rite Aid, Party City, Tuesday Morning, Joann and others currently have an elevated risk of bankruptcy, according to credit agencies, and will be most exposed if economic conditions deteriorate.
Walgreens Boots Alliance on Thursday exceeded fiscal fourth-quarter sales expectations, as the drugstore chain turns itself into a more health-care focused company. The drugstore chain said it anticipates full-year adjusted earnings per share of $4.45 to $4.65 in the coming fiscal year, which is about in line with what Wall Street expected. Yet Walgreens said its business growth will face tough comparisons as it laps strong demand for Covid vaccines and gets hits by the strength of the dollar.
Grubhub, a leading food ordering and delivery marketplace, and Starship Technologies, the world's leading provider of autonomous delivery services, announced today that they will provide robot delivery services on college campuses across the United States. "Robot delivery solves the unique challenges of accessing hard-to-reach areas that come from operating on a college campus," said Adam Herbert, senior director of campus partnerships at Grubhub.
If you headed into the mountains (or the woods, or the lake, or the desert) to escape a tiny city apartment during the pandemic, you probably noticed you weren’t alone. If it seemed like the entire country was flooding into campsites, RVs, and national parks, it’s probably because, by many accounts, they were. According to a report commissioned by the Outdoor Foundation, 2020 saw the highest participation rate on record in outdoor recreation. Visits to parks like Acadia in Maine saw record highs in 2021, and sales of products like sport racks, tents, and sleeping-bag liners saw massive growth.
Recorded fraud attempts remained flat despite a surge in transaction volumes, values and increased number of payment methods, as the broader retail market used Amazon Prime Days 2022 to drive sales, according to new data from ACI Worldwide. ACI Worldwide is a global leader in mission-critical payments software and its merchant business serves tens of thousands of companies worldwide.
UK Finance has reiterated its call for cross-sector action to tackle criminal gangs perpetrating large-scale fraud in the UK, as figures for the first half of 2022 show that a total of over ÂŁ609.8 million was stolen through scams. The data represent a decline of 13 percent compared to H1 2021. Of this total, unauthorized fraud loses were ÂŁ360.8 million and authorized push payment (APP) fraud losses were ÂŁ249.1 million, both down on H1 2021.
The paradoxical nature of cryptocurrency's privacy is that the blockchain, that unchangeable ledger of all a cryptocurrency's transactions, serves as both a map and a mask: Bitcoin are easy enough to follow from one address to the next. But only a few entities, like the cryptocurrency exchanges that allow users to trade their crypto for traditional currency, are able to match the inscrutable strings of numbers and letters in those addresses to real-world identities. So when one of those exchanges suddenly dumps a massive internal user database online, they haven't just spilled their own data. They've offered a key to decipher a vastly larger set of financial secrets.
The Bank of America Institute released a new publication which shows that consumer payments continued to increase in September, but internal data adds to growing signs that the housing market is slowing down. Bank of America total payments increased 10% year over year (YoY) in September; this figure offers a holistic view of money flow and includes credit card, debit card, ACH, wires, bill pay, person-to-person, cash and checks.
Inflation, the rate at which prices rise, was 8.2% in the 12 months to September, down from 8.3% in August. Despite the fall, the figure was still higher than forecast. Inflation in the US is being closely watched as the US central bank's efforts to tame the problem push up the dollar and global borrowing costs. The rate is well above the central bank's 2% target and means the Federal Reserve is likely to continue to keep raising interest rates in an attempt to cool rising prices.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on Monday warned that a “very, very serious” mix of headwinds was likely to tip both the U.S. and global economy into recession by the middle of next year. Dimon, chief executive of the largest bank in the U.S., said the U.S. economy was “actually still doing well” at present and consumers were likely to be in better shape compared with the 2008 global financial crisis. “But you can’t talk about the economy without talking about stuff in the future — and this is serious stuff,” Dimon said.
A new study from FIS®, a global leader in financial services technology, shows how the shopping preferences of younger UK consumers have shifted as adoption of embedded finance services reaches mainstream usage among Millennials and Gen Zs, while their older counterparts are less engaged with newer, digitally-oriented financial experiences. Embedded finance is when consumers have unique, tailored financial services delivered to them at the point of need by non-financial companies.
Deutsche Bank and Fiserv, a global leader in payments and financial services technology, have launched Vert, a comprehensive payment acceptance and banking services provider to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Vert is the only German provider to combine payment acceptance and processing and traditional banking solutions, meeting market demand for an integrated offering and streamlining access to innovative products for merchants of all sizes.
Regions Bank on Tuesday announced the launch of a digital solution enabling Corporate Banking clients to send real-time payments through the RTP® network from The Clearing House. The new real-time payments service is part of Regions’ iTreasury platform, which offers a wide range of competitive financial management options for businesses through Regions’ Treasury Management division.
Fortis, a payment and commerce technology leader for software providers, marketplaces and scaling businesses, surpassed $20 billion in commerce transaction volume, an 80% increase over the previous year, as they continue to scale as a market leader in embedded payments. In addition to this milestone, the company is expanding its fully integrated service offerings and enhancing the leadership team.
The protections and purchasing power of contactless payments took a step forward as Mastercard announced the approval of the first cards for issuers that are compatible with the new EMVCo® contactless specifications designed to protect against attacks from both traditional and quantum computers. Quantum computing, which uses principles of quantum physics to solve complex problems exponentially faster than today’s supercomputers, holds great promise but also risk – bad actors could harness quantum computing to break the encryption that protects key systems.
Mexico is one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing ecommerce markets. It is also one of the most challenging, and global companies aiming to enter it need a trusted partner with deep local knowledge. Stripe has been building financial infrastructure tailored to Mexico for years, an effort it recently enhanced with the integration of two popular Mexican payment methods: bank transfers and installment financing called Meses Sin Intereses (interest-free months).
Adyen, the global financial technology platform of choice for leading businesses, announces that it is launching its unified commerce solution in Mexico. Bolstered by the company’s recently enabled full acquiring capabilities in the country, Adyen can now maintain end-to-end control of the payment flow for transactions occurring in-person and online. Engineered to consolidate data across all sales channels, unified commerce enables businesses to develop a deeper understanding of their consumers in a single overview.
BlueSnap, a global payment orchestration platform of choice for leading B2B and B2C businesses, announced a new partnership with BitPay, the world's largest provider of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency payment services. This product partnership will give businesses the ability to accept and get paid out in up to 15 different cryptocurrencies and seven fiat currencies globally, and supports BlueSnap's mission to help businesses across the globe increase their revenue and reduce costs.
As part of the partnership, Worldline will bring more convenience for Indian customers in the European markets by allowing merchants’ point-of-sale (POS) systems to accept payments from UPI, an instant real-time payment system, as well as RuPay, NPCI’s proprietary card payment network solution. This will result in a multitude of customer-related merchant benefits due to an increase in footfall and spending from Indian tourists.
London-based, currency management automation company Kantox has agreed to be acquired by BNP Paribas for $133 million (€120 million). The company, which made its Finovate debut in 2011, said that the acquisition will help make its technology available to an even wider range of corporate customers worldwide. The deal is the latest evolution of a relationship between Kantox and BNP Paribas that extends back more than three years.
Priority Technology Holdings, Inc., a leading payments technology company helping customers collect, store and send money, announced it has partnered with Valor PayTech for omnichannel solutions. Valor’s integration with Priority’s MX™ Merchant ecosystem is currently underway. Valor is a fast-growing fintech provider of cloud-based, end-to-end, processor-agnostic omnichannel payments solutions.
BJ's Wholesale Club, a leading membership warehouse club operator, and Capital One Financial, a leading bank and credit card company, announced today that they have entered into a strategic program agreement for Capital One to become the exclusive issuing partner for BJ's co-brand Mastercard® program. The new program is expected to launch in early 2023.
In response to the need for faster, more efficient payment options, Australia’s New Payment Platform (NPP) has begun the rollout for its much-anticipated PayTo digital payments solution, augmenting real-time, account-to-account payments. As a primary participant for NPP Australia, leading independent payments solution provider Cuscal Limited is ready to enable PayTo’s back-office needs and requirements supported by the Concourse Financial Software Suite® from leading payments software provider BHMI.
CellPoint Digital, a global leader in payment orchestration, has added payment industry veterans and innovators to its leadership team in important roles in Product, Revenue, Marketing, Strategy and Business Alignment. Tom Randklev joins as Global Head of Product having spent eight years at Global Payments. Based in Atlanta, Tom specialises in strategic planning, competitive analysis and new product launches, and has a passion for developing transformative new payment solutions.
