U.K.

The U.K.’s six major banking groups are now required to have implemented the new Confirmation of Payee (CoP) scheme for Faster Payments and Chaps as part of a regulatory push to tackle the rampant rise in Authorized Push Payment (APP) fraud.

An obscure-sounding statistic gives a fresh look at how dramatic the move to digital finance has been the past few months — and how permanent the move will be.

Orka Technology Group has launched a new earned wage access tool called Orka Pay for hourly workers to gain access to their wages between pay periods.

The spending and account management capabilities of corporate prepaid cards have been given new purpose in a pandemic-struck world dependent on government and charity aid.

As the coronavirus pandemic took hold in March and the U.K. went into lockdown, many of the country’s e-commerce businesses suddenly found themselves facing a nigh unprecedented level of demand.

Traditional U.K. businesses found innovative ways to serve their customers under coronavirus restrictions. Iconic London black taxi cabs, independent local community pharmacies, old-fashioned pubs, and QSRs have turned to in-app mobile payments to enable their businesses to carry on.

Merchants prevailed in a long-running legal battle with Visa and Mastercard in the U.K. over whether interchange fees the payment card networks charged for years in Britain were anticompetitive, which could increase scrutiny on U.S. card interchange rates.

Mobile commerce provider Bango has added Softbank Corp. customers to its list of Japanese mobile phone carriers whose customers can now make purchases in their Amazon accounts and charge the cost to their phone bill.

Coronavirus has made traveling a dicey proposition to begin with, but when U.K. consumers do venture beyond their homes during the pandemic, far fewer plan on using cash for payments.

Once the payment holiday is over, monthly repayments are likely to be higher, leaving many borrowers struggling to manage their debt.