Payments

Circle free offering leaves a lot of money on the table, but it also stems from a fundamentally different approach to cross-border payments.

Amazon’s new Prime rewards program is the latest way the tech titan is cultivating a loyal use base. To retain and engage customers, banks should follow Amazon’s lead and layer in more value-added services.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication plans to add instant payments messaging for the European market by late 2018, marking another step in its ongoing faster payments projects.

The global push to expand financial inclusion takes many paths, based on the challenges—and unique market advantages—in countries where vast portions of the population lack access to modern banking services.

Corporate fleet card giant WEX is getting into the consumer market for the first time through a partnership with GasBuddy, an app that helps drivers find the nearest gas station with current fuel prices.

Copenhagen-based digital payments specialist Nets is rolling out a service in the Nordic region to screen against fraudulent transactions online, with a particular focus on “clickbait fraud” that aims to entice consumers to unknowingly authorize recurring payments in exchange for nothing.

A deeper dive into the workings of the Amazon Prime Reload program should give the card payments industry serious cause for concern.

Consumers don't want to feel disconnected from retailers in e-commerce, and don't want a complicated checkout experience, writes Jason Fordham, vice president of product at SmarterHQ.

The task at hand for retail app developers is increasingly clear: Make it as easy as possible for consumers to pay through a mobile device.

The trade association has teamed up with Retail Benefits to create "CU Perks," a shopping rewards program for CU members in the Pelican State.

In a move that will certainly cause friction across the card payments industry, Amazon announced a new service called Amazon Prime Reload, which incentivizes newcomers to the program to load funds using a debit card or bank account with a 2% cash back on purchases.

While banks are in various stages of development when it comes to distributed ledger technology, the industry is further along than many would assume, big-bank technology executives say.

WorldRemit is integrating with Android Pay, taking a big step toward streamlining the process for sending mobile cross-border remittances.

In its continuing expansion of the Visa Ready faster certification program, the card brand is targeting technology companies that develop software for Visa's business-to-business payments services.

This morning it was announced that Fiserv is to acquire UK mobile payments veteran Monitise for 70 million pounds ($88.72 million). This is quite a bargain considering that at its peak, Monitise was valued at around 2 billion pounds. But beyond the firesale price tag, what exactly does Fiserv get out of this?

Payments professionals have done too little to leverage transformational changes in technology to improve the overall client experience.

So far, the use cases for digital payments from connected cars seem too specific to spark a widespread shift in consumer habits. But connected cars may yet prove to be drivers of change.

Due in part to the U.S.'s lackluster adoption of contactless cards, mobile wallets had a slow and difficult time gaining hold among consumers and merchants that were unfamiliar with the tap-and-pay process or didn't have the right technology. The opposite problem plagues Canada, where contactless cards are so widely used that mobile adds little value.

The financial institution-owned person-to-person network formally went live Monday, enabling direct transfer of funds across 30 U.S. FIs. There are a lot of questions around whether it can compete with the current kings of P-to-P — Venmo and PayPal — but Zelle may not be aiming to take them head-on just yet.

At its core, PayPal remains sharply focused on digital payments. But like other payments providers and processors during what has been a renaissance period for payments technology, the San Jose-based company has had to reinvent itself to keep firm control of its role.