Merchant

It may seem shortsighted, but online retailers need to be laser focused exclusively on what has traditionally worked to maximize online sales, writes Devaraj Southworth, co-founder and CEO of Thirstie.

For several years, PayPal, Square, Adyen and Stripe have dominated the lucrative payments market. Now hundreds of upstarts with names like Bolt, Toast and Due are muscling into the market with their own twist on facilitating commerce between merchants and shoppers.

Cross River Bank has formed a partnership with Stripe that will handle every debit push payment within its platform in near real time via Mastercard Send and Visa Direct.

The agency is unable to process loan applications and faces a daunting backlog once Washington returns to work.

The country’s largest grocery retailer, Kroger, is partnering with Microsoft to pilot two connected experience stores for a proof of concept, featuring new retail technologies that will eventually be deployed across Kroger stores and be sold to the retail industry.

The trade group hopes appropriations legislation for fiscal year 2019 will address confusion over websites being compliant with the ADA, among other concerns.

Investments in software can speed up decision-making and help traditional lenders better compete with fintechs for creditworthy customers who want their loans quickly.

Cashierless tech startup Standard Cognition has acquired the robotic mapping startup, Explorer.ai, to accelerate the rollout of its autonomous checkout solutions to retailers.

As consumers continue to migrate to banking apps, it may be tempting for banks to focus solely on improving that channel experience. But doing so would be making the same mistake as focusing only on cards or cash at the point of sale.

Two trends — competition from challenger banks and the emergence of real-time payments — threaten to eat away at the fees banks collect on overdrafts and bounced checks.