P-to-P payments

Venmo is not a moneymaker for PayPal yet, but that's not stopping the online and mobile payments giant from dreaming big about where its P2P service is headed.

Apple has strived to portray Apple Pay as the trusted, go-to mobile payment option for its customer base, but the company's own security problems have undermined this effort.

Stadiums, arenas and theaters are natural fits for innovations such as social P2P, mobile commerce and transferrable authentication. This, in turn, makes such venues a magnet for the payments industry’s most recognizable brands.

Zelle has been good for Bank of America’s P2P traffic, with the bank reporting eye-popping numbers every quarter. But the bank and the Zelle network have different ways of counting their volumes.

A man entered a SunTrust branch in Sebring, Fla., and shot and killed five women, four of whom were bank employees; 24 million mortgage documents exposed in data security lapse; the battle for deposits is like "a steel-cage" match; and more from this week's most-read stories.

The bank-led P2P network Zelle saw its strongest quarterly growth during the fourth quarter of 2018, as payment volume rose nearly 60 percent to $119 billion for the year. But large banks such as Bank of America are seemingly driving the lion’s share of its volume.

Americans 50 and older make up a sizable portion of the U.S. population — 115 million individuals in 2018. While these consumers may not be the first to use mobile P2P apps, they represent a big payment opportunity because of their economic purchasing power.

Protecting P2P and mobile transactions will mean employing fraud protection measures at enrollment and on an ongoing basis, throughout the customer and payment life cycle, writes David Barnhardt, executive vice president of product at GIACT.

The market for cross-border person-to-person (P2P) remittances is massive. It experienced double-digit growth in 2018 as consumers migrated from one country to another in search of better economic opportunities, as well as to escape political and financial upheaval in their home countries.

Nearly all new payments technologies strive to become as ubiquitous — and as secure — as possible. It's a goal that is harder than ever to achieve.

Facebook’s payments ambitions have made banks wary for years, despite many false starts. But now it looks as if Facebook is pivoting to develop a remittance business, starting with a cryptocurrency project in India.

While credit cards have been around since the 1950s and debit cards introduced years later, they both have become indispensable to the modern consumer. In fact, in certain retail sectors consumers can only use payment cards or mobile payments to make a purchase.

Kleiner Perkins and Ribbit Capital led an $80 million funding round in Viva Republica, the South Korean maker of the popular P2P payment app Toss.

The first wave of data from this year's holiday shopping season is in, providing insights into where the biggest fraud threats are likely to originate in the final weeks of the year.

Proponents of real-time payments systems say banks must embrace them given consumer demand for more immediacy and transparency, even if criminals will try to exploit them.

PayPal is using Venmo's fast growth to power several initiatives, but the app suffered a damaging fraud surge early this year, showing it's not immune from enrollment fraud that challenges the entire P2P sector.

A year after its launch, Zelle’s P2P payment volume has rapidly expanded through usage at the nation’s largest banks. But enabling smaller institutions to offer it to their customers is proving to be more challenging.

Cargo, a provider of in-car commerce systems to the ride-sharing market, is now accepting Venmo as a payment option to complete in-car transactions.

Taking a cue from his previous success in commercial cash checking services, Conext CEO Michael Casalini hopes a Venmo-style mobile app that supports a quick conversion of checks to digital money can attract small businesses.

After advancing into some retail settings in Italy last year, the Jiffy P2P payment service is now an option at the country's Carrefour Italia "super stores," supermarkets and express stores.