Payment cards

Even as the payments landscape has become increasingly complicated and convoluted over the past several years, many industry players have not kept pace with their payments testing methods or tools, writes Steve Gilde, director of global product marketing for Paragon Application Systems.

One expert says the U.S. lags behind other countries, but changes are coming soon – and fast.

It almost seems counterintuitive that a health savings account would be so attractive that it could actually be used as a marketing tool to recruit prospective employees and retain existing ones.

Cardlytics has added Wells Fargo to the list of banks using its card-linked offers platform after a successful pilot, joining JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, the latter of which has leaned on Cardlytics’ marketing service since 2012. Notably, these rivals aren’t demanding exclusivity.

Companies have tried for years to build a market for interactive cards, with little success. Dynamics is taking a different tack by approaching banks to issue the cards, rather than selling directly to consumers.

Business owners are understandably reluctant to allow employees, contractors and freelancers take the company credit card. But asking them to use a personal card raises other issues, such as scanning receipts for reimbursement.

Once these security and convenience issues are addressed in the mind of consumers, we will likely see a faster mainstream adoption of digital payments, according to Matt Tatham, manager of content insights and data analyst at Experian Consumer Services.

Since blockchain technology is based on the core principle of decentralization, it provides an opportunity to break through the multiple middleman fees with an alternative low-fee digital payments network, writes Sarthak Moghe, CEO of TillBilly.

As Amazon Prime Day kicks off, credit unions are looking for ways to entice members to use the CU's card for purchases.

Whatever the reason that Plaid, a prominent data aggregator, can no longer access data from Capital One, the situation demonstrates how fragile fintechs are when they lose banking access.