The information you need to start your day, from PaymentsSource and around the web:
Matchmakers
NerdWallet, a credit card comparison website, has acquired Fundera, a Chicago-based small-business loan marketplace. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
The move will enable San Francisco-based NerdWallet to expand its reach to millions of SMBs that use Chicago-based Fundera’s loan-finder platform. Fundera offers links to 75 lenders including American Express and PayPal, according to a press release.
Fundera, launched in 2014, was honored this year among Arizent’s
Crystal ball
Bank of Montreal has added an AI-powered feature to its personal financial management platform that can warn consumers when their bank account is about to go negative.
BMO’s CashTrack Insight uses AI and machine learning to look seven days ahead and forecast when consumers’ spending patterns suggest they are likely to overdraw their savings or checking account, according to a press release.
Toronto-based BMO introduced BMO insights in late 2019 to help consumers manage personal finances and hit goals with banking and credit card accounts.
Collab against crime
The European Commission has asked global e-commerce and tech companies to collaborate in the fight against ongoing coronavirus-related scams that compromise consumers’ ID and payment credentials.
Fraudsters are dangling bogus COVID-19 cures and PPE deals to consumers while attempting to steal their email addresses and passwords, TechCrunch reports. The EU sees a way to block these crimes if major tech platforms find ways to share relevant data.
Amazon, Alibaba, eBay, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Rakuten and Verizon Media/Yahoo are among organizations the EU hopes to engage in a coordinated response to the scams.
Crypto crackdown
The Canadian Revenue Agency is seeking a judge’s help in auditing consumers’ cryptocurrency activity to see if they failed to pay taxes on gains.
The agency wants access to seven years of client data from crypto exchange Coinsquare, according to a Coindesk report.
The move echoes the U.S. IRS' 2018 pursuit of cryptocurrency trading records of 13,000 high-spending customers of crypto exchange Coinbase.
From the web
THE VERGE | Monday, November 9, 2020
The Flex Rewards program includes a debit card with cash back.
REUTERS | Sunday, November 8, 2020
Amazon said on Monday it had opened three more logistics centers in Brazil to take advantage of the boost the COVID-19 pandemic has given to e-commerce in South America's largest economy.
REUTERS | Saturday, November 7, 2020
Future Retail has challenged its partner Amazon.com Inc in a New Delhi court to stop interfering in its $3.4 billion asset sale deal, the Indian company said in a statement on Saturday.
More from PaymentsSource
While we can’t know what the post COVID-19 landscape will look like, we do know that business expenses will ramp back up, and with them, higher expectations for digital payments from both suppliers and vendors, says Wex's Jay Dearborn.
President-elect Joe Biden's victory over incumbent Donald Trump will end four years of Trump-led isolationist policies, but the balance in Congress is still uncertain and could stall the President-elect's agenda.
Brazil's central bank and the country's National Monetary Council have established operation guidelines for a regulatory sandbox to encourage financial and payments technology innovation.
Bitcoin extended recent gains in Friday trading, continuing its slow progress toward $16,000 after joining a slew of assets from oil to Asian stocks that rallied in the wake of the U.S. election.
Last year, Americans spent about $730 billion on holiday purchases during November and December, which was a 4% increase over 2018 sales, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF). Online and other remote sales amounted to over $167 billion, or about 23% of the total retail sales. During the rest of the year online sales typically account for about 10-11% of retail sales, according to the U.S. Census, but recently have been tracking at 16% in the second quarter of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
There are now under six months until the April 17th, 2021 deadline for independent gas stations to replace magnetic strip-reading card terminals that are EMV-enabled for chip-and-PIN.
Crypto played a key role in Square's 140% year-over-year growth in revenue for the third quarter — and 212% growth in gross profit for the Cash App alone.
The U.S. Department of Justice's lawsuit against Visa alleges that the card network's $5.3 billion deal to buy Plaid is meant to neutralize a competitive threat — even though Visa and Plaid do not see themselves as competing with each other.
India allowed Facebook Inc. to start operating its WhatsApp payments service in the world’s biggest open technology market.
As challenger banks threaten Green Dot Corp.'s status among the underbanked, the prepaid card issuer is diving into their market by unveiling a challenger bank of its own.
