Payments

Payments technology is advancing at such a rapid pace, the most valuable asset for those in merchant acquiring is expertise.

When Amazon was busy driving traffic to its site — and the likes of Walmart and Best Buy were aggressively trying to pull shoppers away — it also invited several issuers to compete to be the top-of-wallet card for Prime Day spending.

Even with an economy that has slowed to a "moderate" pace, American Express says U.S. consumers' spending trends remained solid and, in the case of Amex cardholders, they are willing to pay fees for cards that come with the right features.

Blockchain and cryptocurrency innovations threaten to upend mainstream remittance providers, but there are still market gaps that may be best served by a large bank footprint.

For business payments, financial institutions have the trust advantage over fintechs but are not offering an easier experience, argues Steve Robert, co-founder and CEO of Autobooks.

Swift completed a seven-country trial of its cross-border GPI Instant payment service resulting in the successful integration with Singapore’s domestic instant payment network FAST.

For ISOs, it's hard to watch someone else deliver payment services in their place.

Ever since PayPal took control of Venmo as part of its 2013 purchase of Braintree, it has woven Venmo into more and more of its products. Even other acquisitions aren't immune to the spread of Venmo.

The current overdraft rules could use some tweaks, but it should largely remain the same to protect consumers.

Swift is building out its Global Payments Innovation (GPI) service to allow corporations to initiate and track payments across all of their banking partners from a single source.