Payments

The bill, known as the STOP Act, was introduced by State Sen. Samra Brouk and Assemblymember Steven Raga, and proposes that any wage or cash advance be considered a loan and subject to the state's 16% civil usury law.

Merchants have mostly been silent on President Trump's call for a cap on credit-card interest rates. But they'd take a "huge hit" under such a plan, Synchrony CEO Brian Doubles said Tuesday.

TD Bank's Ruchira Ghosh, Northwest Bank's John Fick and Visa's Nikolaus "Nik" Walser, with moderation by American Banker's Penny Crosman

The card network's Start Path engagement program is scouring the technology world for entrepreneurs working on the new form of artificial intelligence.

The risk facing U.S. banks is not that stablecoins will suddenly siphon deposits through yield alone. It is that deposits will gradually follow utility as financial experiences improve elsewhere.

Pre- and post-purchase, buy now/pay later loans from Affirm will be available on Fiserv-issued debit cards. Last year, Affirm and FIS inked a deal to bring Affirm's BNPL loans to FIS-issued debit cards.

The bank technology seller closed the sale of its payment processor to Global Payments, which sold its card issuing unit to FIS. Helping banks get a handle on artificial intelligence is a big part of FIS' plan to reach banks.

The buy now/pay later lender is seeking to create Affirm Bank, a Nevada-chartered industrial loan company.

The McLean, Virginia-based bank plans to close the deal in mid-2026, about a year after it sealed its landmark purchase of Discover Financial Services.

The acquisition will improve how clients can use agentic artificial intelligence to attract and reel in consumers.

Tech giants such as Google and OpenAI are pushing to bring commerce and checkout into their platforms. But for many merchants, solving the question of how payments fit in is less of a priority.

Crypto-linked cards are seeing strong volume growth despite offering little more than a crypto add-on to traditional payments systems — but familiarity is often a backdoor to more profound changes.

The bank technology seller's deal with Sumitomo Mitsui Card Company is an opportunity to cash in on a government initiative to reduce cash — and comes on the heels of an earnings miss. Plus, Klarna plans to offer more credit options through a partnership with Walmart-backed OnePay, Revolut embraces agentic AI protocols and more in American Banker's global payments and fintech roundup.

Executives surveyed by American Banker said companies vying to wrestle market share from banks are a major threat to operations in the coming year.

President Trump in Davos, Switzerland, talked about his call for lower credit card interest rates and more affordable housing in a lengthy speech that mostly focused on his plan to take over Greenland.

The payment company is betting on agentic commerce to get its checkout tech in front of more merchants and consumers.

As artificial intelligence agents play an increasingly large role in enterprise finance, traditional credit card rails will be incapable of handling the speed and volume of transactions. Something new is needed.

Cryptocurrency has traditionally been an investment product more than a way to make purchases, but fintechs are betting there's a future for digital assets at the point of sale.

The payments firm is hoping that planting a flag in merchant stablecoin payments now will be accretive as stablecoins gain greater adoption.