Payments

Part of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's mandate is to educate consumers by providing reliable information. With its credit card late fee "report" and the associated rulemaking, it has failed to live up to that responsibility.

The core provider's new CEO, Stephanie Ferris, vowed to refocus on banks as FIS reboots after selling off Worldpay.

What lies ahead for the banking industry this year? Here's what analysts and investors are tracking after the latest bank earnings reports.

Max Levchin, CEO of the buy now/pay later lender, said recent tests show young adults prefer interacting with intelligent chatbots over phone-based agents, but the company doesn't foresee major cost savings from generative AI for a few more years.

A "true" stablecoin would benefit the economy by improving the money supply, facilitating frictionless payments and lowering the cost of borrowing fiat currency.

Many banks got shares in the lucrative payments network when it went public in 2008. Some of them are now looking to sell in order to offset losses on their sales of underwater bonds.

Executives of Allegiant, Breeze and Spirit complained to the heads of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Department of Transportation that the relationships between big banks and big airlines are anticompetitive. Consumer advocates also questioned whether large airlines are delivering on promised rewards and if consumers are racking up debt to accrue miles and points.

The next major chance the lawmakers could have on the so-called "swipe fee" legislation will come next year as Congress looks toward a tax package.

The Federal Trade Commission recently blasted two companies for their murky business practices and confusing charges. Industry experts say many digital and recurring payments are inviting more regulatory scrutiny.

National Australia Bank is adding a Pay By Bank option for near-instant payments, Italy is bringing open-loop payments to buses in Tuscany, and more.

Joining forces with mobile and faster payments, generative AI is coming on board to help deliver better customer experiences and combat fraud

Sophia Goldberg, CEO of the startup Ansa, is a self-described payments nerd. She studied this industry for years — and literally wrote the book on payments — before starting her own company to develop digital wallets. In this live session, Goldberg, one of American Banker's Innovators of the Year for 2024, will share lessons on consumer and merchant behavior, and the changes she expects to see.

Banks rely on fee income to a greater or lesser extent depending on business model, and the Biden administration is intent on cutting consumer fees across the economy. But that push might hamper another administration priority: financial inclusion.

Katherine Weislogel's career began by being in the right place at the right time.

By training a core payment card fraud-detection platform on more than 15 billion transactions, the card network is honing the accuracy of warnings sent to issuers about suspicious purchases.

Incumbents face the challenge of updating their infrastructure for digital payments, while newcomers are pushing to compete by using artificial intelligence, cloud hosting and other technologies.

Big national retailers will capture all the financial benefits from proposed reductions in swipe fees, while consumers will be left with fewer benefits programs and less secure transactions.

Tighter merchant connections between Square and Cash App helped Block produce stronger-than-expected results during the first quarter, while Jack Dorsey said the firm will launch its first remittance product later this year leveraging decentralized finance.

The Federal Reserve has proposed that the two payments services run seven days a week, meaning they'd no longer close on weekends or holidays. The public has 60 days to comment.

The embedded banking services Amazon offers to third-party sellers come from the hidden hand of JPMorgan Chase's corporate payments arm, which markets its services to e-commerce platforms on a white-label basis.