Fintech

While consumer spending on Valentine’s Day doesn’t approach that of the larger holidays, certain retailers — such as jewelers and florists — benefit more than others, while restaurants, bars and other dining establishments tend to see significantly more traffic for those couples who want an evening out. Increasingly, it’s also a special day for pets.

While many public policy initiatives focus on the 1.7 billion “unbanked,” we rarely hear about the nearly 1 billion people who do have a bank account and a smartphone but have no credit card nor cross-border-enabled debit, writes Eric Rosenthal, managing director of the Americas at Rapyd.

The moves are aimed at beefing up consumer lending and attracting deposits in markets where Citi has no branch presence.

Norway stepped in to limit the growth of high interest rate consumer loans and credit card debt to protect the economy from ballooning household leverage amid rising interest rates.

It took some time to get there, but mobile wallets may have finally found their niche — boosted more by e-commerce than by the point of sale systems they were designed for.

If MoneyGram couldn't be taken under the wings of Ant Financial, which operates China's Alipay wallet, it is doing the next best thing.

The financial services industry has plenty of tasks, such as card issuance, that can benefit from the automation that artificial intelligence brings, writes Jie Wu, a director at GoodData.

The Lee's Summit, Mo.-based institution has paid out $350,000 over the last five years to members.

It’s unusual for a seemingly healthy company’s website to implore its U.S. customers to seek out a competitor with less than a month's notice, but cross-border payment processor WorldFirst has done just that.

As another possible shutdown looms, concerns about furloughed workers’ credit histories have shifted the reform discussion away from data security.