Payments

Financial crisis-era rebel Simple is turning to payments innovation — along with its traditional combativeness on fees and rates — to stay relevant against the many fintechs lurking at the edges of the banking world.

Banks are still in their experimental phase of using virtual and augmented reality to interact with customers, and the key to their success will be embracing the technology's social nature. And sometimes that means making an app designed for non-customers.

Antivirus solutions, firewalls, secure web gateways and URL filtering cannot reliably detect cryptominer code and have proved ineffective at preventing it from auto-executing within endpoint browsers, writes Carolyn Crandall, chief deception officer at Attivo Networks.

Citigroup spent years reeling in customers with promotional rates, many of which have expired or soon will. The bank thinks it can keep a large number of those customers and make more money off of them.

Cross-border e-commerce is seeing explosive growth, driving a race among payment providers and acquirers to equip online sellers with the technology to accept any kind of payment in virtually any region. Credit and debit cards are the dominant payment type North American merchants accept, but are much less common elsewhere.

Visa showcased payment technologies it’s developing for future Olympic games, including in-home “couch commerce” leveraging augmented reality.

The payments industry stood out as an active market for mergers and acquisitions during the first three quarters of 2018 with a 33 percent increase in transactions over the same period last year.

American Express is launching Early Pay, a digital financing service that allows large U.S. companies and their suppliers to benefit from discounted bill payments.

While businesses' ability to transact internationally has expanded, the act of settling payments has gotten more complex, expensive and time-consuming. That means opportunity for companies that can provide solutions.

Blockchain technology can make it easier to validate a patient's HSA information, for example — helping speed along the process despite the traditional data validation hurdle they may face otherwise in this situation, writes Bruce Silcoff, CEO of Shyft Network.

To remain competitive, retailers must always have one eye on the future. Mobile wallets offer a strategic platform for retailers to harness and promote emerging payment models, writes Julian Wallis, retail director at Rambus.

Companies founded by women receive significantly less than the venture capital available to all U.S. firms, but trends are improving for all startups this year, including for women-owned fintechs.

While businesses' ability to transact internationally has expanded, the act of settling payments has gotten more complex, expensive and time-consuming. That means opportunity for companies that can provide solutions.

PayPal and Walmart are offering a cash-in and cash-out service from PayPal accounts within Walmart stores. It's the first time Walmart, one of the founders the defunct Merchant Customer Exchange, will accept a third-party mobile wallet.

Worldpay is combining the Worldpay Bankout solution, which will now deliver to 154 direct bank disbursement destinations, and Worldpay FastAccess enabled by Visa Direct.

The payment landscape is still very fragmented with local solutions holding their own against global giants and new technologies such as AI and blockchain keeping the payments market very enterprising, writes Eva Murphy Ryan, trade development executive for financial services and technology at Enterprise Ireland New York.

For all the media attention around the best options for cardholders when making transactions abroad, there's little focus on the lack of transparency on the costs involved with making a purchase in the local currencies where Visa, Mastercard and the issuers manage the conversion, argues Gino Ravaioli, chairman of the DCC Forum.

Called Bill Pay Exchange, it will power instant bill pay for consumers from their bank or credit union accounts in a matter of seconds versus days when using the traditional bank bill pay ACH network.

The three credit unions from Connecticut will receive a variety of services from the credit union service organization, including bill pay.