Payment processing

Banks and marijuana dispensaries are getting closer to having a more cohesive relationship. But not close enough to bring cannabis sellers out of the high-risk category.

Companies report that cross-border payments account for just 20% of payment volume but typically take 80% of accounts payable's time. That's simply not scalable. You can’t just keep throwing people at this problem, writes Karla Friede, co-founder and CEO of Nvoicepay.

Payment companies have a responsibility to both merchants and consumers to emerge as brands in their own right, with values that resonate not just with the businesses they are supporting, but with the customers using their services, writes Koen Vanpraet, CEO of Intrapay.

Emerging faster-payment technology can address processing and settlement gaps between banks and fintechs that can cause financial challenges for families, according to Rahm McDaniel, vice president of strategic solutions for Q2 Holdings.

Merchants looking at third-party fraud services should also for detailed information regarding their modus operandi and results, including the steps they take to protect clients' data, according to Bernardo Lustosa, co-founder and COO of ClearSale.

Joe Kaplan, former president of the Electronic Transactions Association and most recently CEO of Paya, died unexpectedly on July 26.

From its beginnings as a standalone Starbucks Card app, the Starbucks mobile experience was always a bit different from what other companies tried to do.

The jewel in PayPal's crown — Venmo — has lost some of its shine.

American Express' blockchain patent application isn't just about payments: It could also radically change how card-based merchant offers are made and allow them to become much more targeted.

To consolidate the data flows that are increasingly becoming part of real-time payment processing, Ingenico is turning to MapR Technologies to provide artificial intelligence and analytics to its platform.

Rather than ban screen scraping, financial institutions should improve secure account connectivity so that consumers can share data with the apps they want to use.

At its current pace, the Global Payments Division of INTL FCStone Ltd. says it could process more than $1 billion in payments each year in Brazil.

Maybe it's coincidence, or maybe it's progress — in recent weeks, a number of large payment networks have suffered brief but widespread outages, particularly in Europe.

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.

Mastercard and Worldpay are embarking on a strong push to promote Mastercard's Pay by Bank system, which will likely face a deluge of competition under the updated Payment Services Directive (PSD2), which took effect this year.

Merchant acquirers have moved mountains to embrace software and e-commerce over the old model of selling point of sale hardware, but there are signs that transformation is not enough to please investors.

Citi and other banks are investing in automation aimed at speeding up the old-fashioned process for institutional clients' receivables and payables.

Digital payments are becoming a critical aspect of nearly every new service for merchants or financial institutions.

With the advent of the quantum computing, current encryption algorithms stand to be broken, and all of our data could be vulnerable as a result, writes Malte Pollmann, CEO of Utimaco.

Starbucks achieved rapid adoption of its mobile card app by building it on top of the highly successful Starbucks closed-loop gift card. Such a model could also apply to the cannabis market, which is largely shunned by mainstream banks and card networks.