58% of merchants are familiar with surcharging, but only 23% of small merchants reported that they charged an extra fee to consumers using credit cards, according to new insights from TSG.
The new data is captured in TSG's 24-page U.S. Surcharging Snapshot, sponsored by CardX. Provided to readers as a free report, this snapshot highlights select trends in the U.S. surcharging market, along with additional feedback gathered from a poll of small merchants on their understanding and use of surcharging.
A group of Republican attorneys general are pushing the major payment networks — Visa, Mastercard and American Express — to drop their plans to start tracking sales at gun stores, arguing the plans could infringe on consumer privacy and push legal gun sales out of the mainstream financial network. The letter comes more than a week after the payment networks said they would adopt the International Organization for Standardization’s new merchant code for sales at gun stores.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon likened crypto tokens to Ponzi schemes before a U.S. House Committee Oversight hearing on Wednesday, reiterating his well-known criticism of cryptocurrencies. “I'm a major skeptic on crypto tokens, which you call currency like Bitcoin. They are decentralized Ponzi schemes,” he said, pointing to the billions of dollars lost each year through crypto-related hacks and how cryptocurrencies are used in crimes such as ransomware payments, money laundering, and sex-trafficking.
They say if you’re going to cut, cut deeply so you only have to do it once. Alas, a growing number of companies are realizing that despite layoffs earlier in the year, they need to cut back more now. Klarna, the Stockholm, Sweden-based buy now, pay later outfit finds itself in this camp. According to the outlet Sifted, the 17-year-old company told employees on Monday in a video message from COO Camilla Giesecke that Klarna is reducing staff again to “reflect” its new and “more focused nature.”
A pair of bipartisan bills in Congress aim to lower the swipe fees, also known as interchange fees, that retailers pay every time a customer makes a purchase with their card. The effort is backed by retail giants including Walmart, (WMT) Target (TGT), and Kroger (KR), as well as convenience stores and independent grocers. “Swipe fees for credit cards are higher in the United States than anywhere else in the industrialized world — more than seven times as high as Europe,” a coalition of businesses wrote in a letter to lawmakers last week. “They are an inflation multiplier.”
The e-commerce cart abandonment rate is currently between 74% and 77%, and the problem is costing U.S. online retailers between $111 billion and $136 billion in lost revenue annually. For retailers who invest time and money bringing customers to their sites and taking them through the shopping process, cart abandonment is “a huge problem,” said Bolt CEO Maju Kuruvilla. That’s because “Amazon has kind of trained people” to expect low or no shipping costs, said Sheridan Trent, director of market intelligence with payments consulting firm The Strawhecker Group, in an interview.
The Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) recognized the 2022 inductees to the ETA Hall of Fame at the Strategic Leadership Forum. The ETA Hall of Fame recognizes members whose contributions to the industry have been significant, substantial, and long-standing. "ETA Hall of Fame inductees embody the spirit of bold leadership and innovation of the payments industry," said Jodie Kelley, CEO of ETA. “Our industry is constantly evolving and innovating. ETA’s Hall of Fame allows us to honor those who have helped pave the way for the modern payments industry.”
Credit Suisse is sounding out investors for fresh cash, two people familiar with the matter said, approaching them for the fourth time in roughly seven years as it attempts a radical overhaul of its investment bank. The bank started in recent weeks to speak to investors about the move, the people said. Various scenarios are under discussion for the investment bank, including the most drastic option of largely exiting the U.S. market, two sources said.
Stakeholder capitalism has become both a flashy buzzword and a lightning rod for political division. Despite these headwinds, many business leaders believe it’s an important framework for navigating our current moment. They argue that companies exist to serve a range of stakeholders—including consumers, employees, society, and the planet—rather than just growing their stock prices and the bottom line. But in recent years, this mentality—and the so-called ESG (environmental, social, and governance) policies it’s birthed—have been increasingly politicized.
At the advice of their wedding planner, the couple decided to put their nuptials on layaway, so to speak, by using the financial services platform Maroo. Introduced in July 2021, Maroo gives couples the option to pay its network of vendors in installments over a 12-month period, similar to how “buy now, pay later” programs offered by companies including Afterpay and Klarna allow people to incrementally pay for clothing and home goods bought online.
The Nasdaq U.S. stock exchange is eyeing a push into institutional custody services for bitcoin and cryptocurrency. The move would mark a new chapter for the company that has so far chosen to not compete in a market currently dominated by the likes of Coinbase, BitGo and Gemini. Instead, the exchange has serviced these institutions with offerings such as its trading and market surveillance technologies.
The Japanese government is preparing to introduce a system for companies to pay salaries digitally – without going through bank accounts – by spring 2023. By promoting this system, which allows companies to transfer salaries to workers using smartphone payment apps, the government hopes to solve the complex issues facing foreign workers in Japan, expand the financial services market and deregulation, and promote growth.
Consumers are pumped to celebrate Halloween this year. Participation in Halloween-related activities will resume to pre-pandemic levels, with 69% of consumers planning to celebrate the holiday this year, up from 65% in 2021 and comparable to 68% in 2019, according to the National Retail Federation’s annual survey. Total Halloween spending is expected to reach a record $10.6 billion, exceeding last year’s record of $10.1 billion.
Walmart and Target this week announced plans to hire a combined 140,000 seasonal workers to assist the retailers in their efforts for the upcoming holiday season. Walmart in a release said it planned to hire around 40,000 new workers in seasonal and full-time roles across the company. These new positions include seasonal in-store associates, full-time permanent truck drivers and customer care associates in the company’s call centers.
Ever since Amazon reimagined the grocery store from the ceiling down with its computer-vision-based “Just Walk Out” checkout, and the pandemic gave online grocery shopping a major boost, traditional grocers have been feeling the pressure to bring high-tech experiences to IRL stores by adding things like smart carts and robots to their aisles. With a new slate of grocery tech offerings called Connected Stores, Instacart aims to help grocers compete with the e-comm behemoth through a one-stop shop of features.
Fintech startup Revolut has confirmed it was hit by a highly targeted cyberattack that allowed hackers to access the personal details of tens of thousands of customers. Revolut spokesperson Michael Bodansky told TechCrunch that an “unauthorized third party obtained access to the details of a small percentage (0.16%) of our customers for a short period of time.” Revolut discovered the malicious access late on September 11 and isolated the attack by the following morning.
Deutsche Bank and Visa are entering into a new collaboration to help prevent online retail fraud. Merchants who process their e-commerce payments via Deutsche Bank can now use “Decision Manager”, an automated fraud detection system from Visa-owned company Cybersource. The solution works like a risk management system and calculates a risk value for each individual transaction using artificial intelligence and specified rules.
Pleterski and his company AP Private Equity Limited are facing at least two civil lawsuits after 140 people have come forward to say they invested a combined $35 million with Pleterski. Those people believed they were investing in cryptocurrency, and Pleterski’s online presence—including photos of the 23-year-old on private jets and next to luxury cars—helped create the image that he knew what he was doing.
The Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised benchmark interest rates by another three-quarters of a percentage point and indicated it will keep hiking well above the current level. In its quest to bring down inflation running near its highest levels since the early 1980s, the central bank took its federal funds rate up to a range of 3%-3.25%, the highest it has been since early 2008, following the third consecutive 0.75 percentage point move.
A comprehensive gauge on the health of the US economy dropped in August for the sixth straight month, reinforcing concerns about a possible recession. The Conference Board said Thursday that its Leading Economic Index for the United States dipped last month. The index, which tracks a range of metrics capturing activity in the jobs market, manufacturing, financial markets and housing, is designed to detect when recessions are coming.
The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits increased moderately last week, indicating the labor market remains tight despite the Federal Reserve's attempt to cool demand with aggressive interest rate increases. The weekly unemployment claims report from the Labor Department on Thursday, the most timely data on the economy's health, suggested that job growth remained solid this month.
US enterprise tech provider NCR Corporation is to split into two publicly traded firms – one focused on digital commerce, the other on ATMs – by the end of 2023. NCR says the split will “unlock value” for the company’s shareholders by creating two firms that can pursue independent growth strategies. CEO Michael Hayford says the separation of NCR’s businesses will create “two strong companies at scale”, enabling each to simplify operations and provide investors with a better ability to value each business.
American Express is set to hire 1500 technology workers - including software engineers, coders and developers - by the end of the year. Chief information officer Ravi Radhakrishnan tells Bloomberg that the firm has already hired 3600 technical workers this year and is not done yet as it seeks tech staff for teams company-wide. About 60% of the new hires will be based in the US, with a third in India and the rest in Europe.
Though quantum computing technology is still new, JPMorgan Chase, Ally Bank, Credit Agricole and other banks are actively testing and in some cases using it, according to speakers at the HPC + AI on Wall Street conference in New York this week. "We realize that if a company doesn't do anything about the market right now, and just waits for quantum advantage to become a reality, when quantum advantage becomes real, it might be too late," said Marco Pistoia, managing director, distinguished engineer, head of global technology applied research and head of quantum computing at JPMorgan Chase.
Citigroup Inc said on Wednesday it was planning to wind down its retail bank in the United Kingdom, aiming to further streamline operations as part of its chief executive's strategy. The move would help Citi improve its focus on services to wealthy clients, the bank said, adding that it had asked certain of its retail clients to shift to its private bank. Winding down its UK retail bank, which comprises just a single branch, would have no material financial impact on the company, the lender added.
Fortis, a payment and commerce technology leader for software providers, marketplaces and scaling businesses, announced its partnership with Visual Matrix, a leading hotel property management system. Both partners have deep lodging vertical expertise, making the partnership a great fit that will improve the guest and hotel operator experience by integrating Fortis' award-winning commerce platform with Visual Matrix's industry-leading hotel operating system.
Gr4vy, a cloud-native payments company, announced a new strategic partnership with BitPay to empower its merchants to easily accept crypto payments through BitPay's checkout offering. As part of Gr4vy's no-code payment orchestration platform (POP), merchants can now implement and offer BitPay's advanced crypto payment options without assuming added crypto risk, fear of chargebacks, fraud or high transaction fees while expanding into new global markets.
ACI Worldwide, the global leader in mission-critical, real-time payments software, has announced that Amanda Mickleburgh, product director for merchant fraud, has been appointed Co-Chair of the European Advisory Board of the Merchant Risk Council (MRC). The MRC is a global membership organization connecting eCommerce payments and fraud professionals through education, networking and knowledge sharing.
Banc of California, Inc., the parent holding company of Banc of California, N.A. announced that the Bank has acquired the payments platform and technology of Global Payroll Gateway, Inc. and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Deepstack Technologies, LLC (collectively, “Deepstack”) for $24 million in cash and stock. Headquartered in Jupiter, Florida with a team located in Southern California, Deepstack is a differentiated software-led and e-commerce payments platform that provides clients with payment solutions.
Bluefin, the recognized integrated payments leader in encryption and tokenization technologies that protect payments and sensitive data, has announced an industry partnership with commercial hardware manufacturer Sunmi. Sunmi provides intelligent IoT devices and integrated solutions combining software and hardware to empower business owners.
Finastra and Visa announced a Banking as a Service (BaaS) collaboration to co-develop new functionality on its Payments Hub solutions and implement Visa Direct2 – which provides access to more than two billion accounts through push to account offerings. The new capability will give Finastra’s bank customers around the world access to cross-border payouts capabilities for small- and medium-sized businesses, and individuals, in multiple currencies and countries.
Stripe, a financial infrastructure platform for businesses, announced that it will support MAN Truck & Bus to pilot MAN SimplePay—a product that will orchestrate payments between MAN truck fleet owners and their service partners, powered by Stripe payments and Stripe Connect. MAN Truck & Bus, part of Traton Group, has played a prominent role in global logistics for more than 100 years and is one of the largest vehicle manufacturers in Germany.
