Payments

The Biden administration should widen the scope of its junk fee initiatives and provide small- and medium-size businesses with relief from excessive international payments charges.

The rocky journey and abrupt end of the technology company's fledgling buy now/pay later service underscores ongoing challenges facing fintechs that offer point-of-sale installment loans, and how banks may benefit from the changing BNPL ecosystem.

The organization says 'request for pay' has gotten early traction with billing and account-to account transfers. Now it's targeting consumer-to-government and digital wallet disbursements.

The card network has developed a digital approach to delivering disbursements for disaster relief and other purposes via mobile devices, without requiring a separately downloaded app.

A $30 billion settlement between Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc. and retailers to cap credit-card swipe fees is likely to be rejected by a federal judge in Brooklyn, a setback in the two decade-long litigation.

PNC has cut its credit card late fees to $8, and Wells Fargo has eliminated the charges on one new card. The moves signal that issuers are already adjusting to a CFPB rule that's currently on hold amid a court challenge.

Longtime payments chief Takis Georgakopoulos is leaving the bank. New co-heads Umar Farooq and Max Neurkirchen are inheriting a powerhouse, but they face lots of challenges.

An iOS 18 update will enable a Tap to Pay-like system for peer-to-peer payments. Meanwhile, will BNPL rules be different in Australia than in the U.S.?

Illinois' recent move to prohibit the inclusion of taxes and tips in credit card interchange fees suggests that electronic transactions are too expensive and also that there are too many entities working unilaterally to reduce those costs.

PayPal has brought on expert pitchmen from Uber and Plaid to build an advertising platform for merchants. Its rivals are on a similar path.

Late payments, which have been on a steady rise since 2021, are now climbing at a slower rate or even declining at some major card issuers. Risks remain, but there's 'reason to be cautiously optimistic," one analyst said.

An interchange provision included in Illinois' budget bill could force banks and payment processors nationwide to revamp their payments infrastructure, lobbying groups for the industry say.

Digital assets have never caught on for mainstream payments, but the card network isn't giving up hope. Its latest effort aims to reduce complexity by learning from the successes of digital wallets.

In the U.S., the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors caused a sharp reduction in cash use. But with paper bills still accounting for nearly a fifth of all payments, the option is still far too entrenched to risk extinction.

By making it easier to enroll and access financial services such as buy now/pay later lending, the search giant hopes to enhance connections with users.

The e-commerce firm will no longer accept Amex credit cards globally beginning in August, citing the card network's higher-than-average cost of acceptance.

Mastercard launches palm checkout in Uruguay, the U.K. commits to a gradual rollout of King Charles banknotes starting this week, and more.

A proposal from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to extend the same protections as credit cards to the fast-growing BNPL industry aims to protect consumers, but it could also stunt the nascent industry's growth, experts say.

The technology is adept at working with partial account numbers and other shreds of data to alert banks of ongoing and potential crime, the network contends.