Payments

IT projects are under scrutiny due to the coronavirus, not only in terms of budgets but also how fast firms can deploy automation for tasks such as business payments for companies that have turned to remote work.

While the primary focus for most credit card providers in March was on emphasizing fee forgiveness and payment deferral support, moving forward issuers need to focus on a mix of strategies to retain their cardholders' share of spend, says The Futurist Group's Demitry Estrin.

Quick forbearance actions averted an immediate hit to asset quality, but executives warned that a spike in unemployment and a looming recession will cause long-term problems.

OCBC Bank has integrated Google Pay into its P2P transfer service, thereby expanding its customers’ options for reducing their cash usage during the coronavirus crisis.

As Amazon and e-commerce companies in parallel broadened their adoption rates, they further trained consumers to expect a frictionless and speedy checkout process, says Grubbrr's Bhavin Asher.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic, it was becoming clear that the work of the past decade to establish the Single Euro Payment Area was paying off with real-time payments networks and opening possibilities for another European payments scheme.

Net income fell 46% in the first quarter as the company added nearly $5 billion to its loss reserves in anticipation of a wave of loan defaults.

The benefits of virtual payment cards go beyond replacing physical cards and eliminating social contacts. Payment vendors that manage these virtual cards can also create branded cards and portals for companies, says Berkeley Payments' Jonathan Hamburg.

Though NFC adoption is still somewhat patchwork in the U.S., new data suggests contactless payment transaction volume is rising during the coronavirus outbreak, giving an advantage to banks and merchants that enabled it early.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wants to make it easier for those who lack bank accounts to receive pandemic relief payments authorized by Congress.

Suneera Madhani, CEO of the digital acquirer Fattmerchant, tells PaymentsSource how the coronavirus pandemic has affected how her employees go to market with new payments technology — and how making the shift to digital helps both the acquirer and its clients.

PINs and passwords are increasingly viewed as insufficient to tackle this new standard, says Fingerprints' Jonas Andersson.

Commonwealth of Australia (CBA) reports digital wallet users spent a AUS$1 billion (about $630 million) in March 2020, a high for the bank that's part of an acceleration to digital wallets and contactless cards during the coronavirus crisis.

The mainstream adoption of Bitcoin is getting a boost from credit card giant Visa Inc., which joined startup Fold to offer a card that earns rewards denominated in the cryptocurrency instead of airline miles or cash.

With the EMV liability shift date for automated fuel dispensers (AFD) looming, subject to any last-minute changes, we are seeing major changes at fuel sites across the USA. With close to 150,000 active fuel sites in the U.S. alone, there are a huge number of individual pumps that will need to be upgraded to accept chip and PIN cards.

Fintechs, startups and bank-led projects were already working to excise generations of inefficiencies out of supply chains. The coronavirus has heightened the need for smooth payments.

Huawei Pay hopes to benefit from UnionPay's network and scale as it launches in Singapore, a market that already has several large mobile pay apps including Apple Pay.

The amount of money migrant workers send to their home countries usually holds up well in a crisis. Not this time.

For decades, automated check reconciliation stood out as the lone sanctuary for AR professionals. However, the advent of payment automation indicates that electronic payment reconciliation is more than capable of taking up the baton, says Nvoicepay's Kim Lockett.

While reports of toilet paper and hand-sanitizer shortages may be common stories on the nightly news, one consumer goods category is flying off the shelves at an even faster pace, one never seen before – guns and ammunition, increasing payments volume for gun shops, a merchant category financial service providers traditionally avoid.