Payments

Businesses have turned to workarounds to accommodate the coronavirus’ impact on brick-and-mortar stores, emergency measures that will likely become permanent in order for these businesses to survive into the future.

There is no denying that the upgrade to EMV will reduce certain types of fraud by noticeable amounts, but there should be no illusion that this is a “silver bullet” to a growing fraud trend, says The ai Corporation's James Crawshaw.

Veem specializes in cross-border payments, but when small-business customers clamored for help this month with emergency SBA loans, the fintech responded.

The advent of open banking gives EMIs a once-in-a-generation opportunity to carry on doing what they do best, but doing it faster, cheaper, and with broader horizons, says Token.io's Stefano Paoletti.

For Good Causes has emerged from pilot in the U.K. to help consumers and businesses convert loyalty rewards points to digital cash donations for charities impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Telecommunications company Tigo Tanzania has expanded digital money transfers, allowing customers to send and receive money from their mobile wallets with other providers in the East African region.

Discover transitioned all of its 8,000 U.S.-based call center personnel to work from home within a matter of days after the U.S. declared a national emergency on March 13. By March 20, Discover had 95% of its agents working from home using a thin-client device to emulate their call center desktops.

The lender behind the credit cards for Gap, J.C. Penney and other retailers took a large provision for loan losses and abandoned full-year earnings guidance as the nationwide shutdowns tied to the coronavirus pandemic have led to a sharp decline in spending on its cards.

Many companies have yet to take advantage of automation when it comes to testing their payment channels, a commonly overlooked but vitally important area, says Paragon Application Systems’ Steve Gilde.

Google’s reported plan to offer its own version of the Apple Card is less of a play for credit and more of a play for its mobile users' bank accounts.

Overall credit card spending is down 32% while debit card purchases have declined by 12% for the week ending April 12.

Coinbase Inc., one of the most popular U.S. cryptocurrency exchanges, said it hired Barclays Capital Inc. veteran Brett Tejpaul to serve as head of institutional coverage.

The trend to mobile is accelerating due to government stimulus checks, closed bank branches and the move to e-commerce, sayd Mitek's Michael Diamond.

When we go back to normal, it's our opportunity to start making long-overdue infrastructure upgrades, says Nvoicepay's Derek Halpern.

Fast-moving payments innovation was already threatening comfortable connections between consumers and businesses before the pandemic turned the trend into an outright crisis.

Contactless technology provider Mobeewave is launching tap-to-phone features that remove current contactless payment limits for merchants and consumers globally.

The U.S. Treasury Department is in talks with some airlines about accepting their loyalty programs as collateral against government loans to help them weather the coronavirus crisis.

The best solutions consider both the user and the device, says says Fingerprints' Jonas Andersson.

Just as U.S. lawmakers are ramping up demand for a digital dollar, Facebook's Libra project is dialing back its scope.

As the market deals with the short-term challenge of getting stimulus payments into the hands of citizens, the country has a unique opportunity to put the unbanked and underbanked on a long-term path to electronic payment methods, Jim Johnson of FIS says.