David Heun

BNY Mellon has launched a system that automates medical and dental insurance claim payments, attaches benefit explanations and enables virtual card support for medical providers.

The pandemic-driven move to electronic payments isn't slowing down, and card issuers are finding an eager group of innovators promising a speedy migration to digital card production.

Donor management provider Pushpay has added new software that will help churches target donations through digital channels while providing more interactions and communication within congregations.

FIS' purchase of Worldpay in 2019 required Ellyn Raftery, the company's chief marketing and communication's officer, to reshape its brand to showcase the strengths of both companies — all while a major global pandemic hastened her timeline.

Cross-border payments provider dLocal is offering its technology platform for Spotify users in Latin America, enabling alternative payment methods for underbanked Spotify Premium customers purchasing digital music.

Baptist Memorial Health Care in Memphis, Tenn., is among the first to enable real-time payment posting into Epic systems and a single deposit that reconciles daily with the Baptist Memorial system.

With consumers and merchants alike sharing the need to be paid faster, the case for adopting real-time payments globally has quickly advanced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

If the mega payments deals of 2019 left the acquiring landscape somewhat scorched, the COVID-19 pandemic planted new seeds to allow ISOs to grow by quickly converting merchants to electronic payments.

Various efforts to limit cash were in motion well before the global health crisis, but merchant and consumer digital money habits being built during the pandemic will carry on for many years, thus leaving cash sidelined in many purchasing scenarios.

Advocates of allowing merchants to add a surcharge to defray the cost of credit card interchange have had to overcome network bureaucracy, state laws and even ingrained habits among the merchants themselves.

Amid the economic and health wreckage the COVID-19 global pandemic has created, payments have stepped to the forefront in a way that has allowed banks, merchants and consumers to not only continue to do business, but also to increase communication.

Fintech software provider Rapyd and LytePay, a payments provider for self-employed workers, are partnering to launch a digital business wallet and accompanying Mastercard for real estate agents in Singapore.

Cloud-based patient billing provider VisitPay is partnering with the Geisinger Health System to simplify the billing and payments process for both patients and providers.

For real-time payments to become a standard in U.S. billing and payment processing, businesses have to want what providers are developing. And that acceptance, or the interest in having an RTP option, is on the rise.

For Marqeta, the advancement of 3D Secure 2.0 in Europe presented an opportunity to design its own version of the online security protocol in order to claim ownership of the standard and provide more flexibility for its use with customers.

A rise in chargebacks has renewed a push for an independent standards body by the SPP, formed in 2018 to represent merchant groups .

As health care payments increasingly look like traditional retail payments with various provider-consumer touchpoints, those acquiring hospital and medical clients are also turning to a payment facilitator model to secure contracts.

Payments platform APEXX Global is working with PayPal to expand payment methods to e-commerce merchants using APEXX, including the addition of the Venmo P2P digital wallet.

ACH network steward Nacha says Visa has been added to its list of partners for a payment information exchange it is creating to help credentialed service providers share and manage electronic payments information for faster and more secure processing.

John Drechny, the CEO of the Merchant Advisory Group, talks to PaymentsSource Associate Editor David Heun about how merchants are looking beyond the coronavirus crisis — and how every choice merchants make today will have consequences that last well beyond the pandemic.