Payments

Strong consumer spending and cross-border activity drove an 8% increase in Visa's total payments volume during the first quarter of the year, although Asia's economic recovery is taking longer than expected.

Mastercard launches service to fight instant-payment fraud, EU may green-light Apple's NFC-access plan, and more.

A new Citizens Bank survey suggests rising check-fraud incidents are driving middle-market companies to accelerate plans to fully adopt digital payments. But 70% of all businesses will continue to rely on checks for years to come, according to recent data from the Association for Financial Professionals.

The bank will use biometric authentication to streamline checkout in stores starting in 2025. It has already completed internal and external pilots of the technology.

New details have emerged about the negotiations that culminated in Capital One's blockbuster $35 billion agreement to acquire Discover. At one point last December, the two parties broke off discussions, according to a securities filing.

Powered by younger, affluent cardholders, American Express saw a 6% increase in billed business during the first quarter, while weak growth still plagues its small-business segment.

Amid healthy first-quarter loan growth and improving credit quality, Discover Financial Services slashed its profits by $800 million to offset remediation costs from a 16-year period when it overcharged certain merchants.

FedNow emerges as a key component of our industry's digital transformation, filling the void in our payment infrastructure and paving the way for a new era of banking.

U.S. customers who have previously used Sweden-based Klarna's buy now/pay later financing — and paid off their loans in full — will be prequalified for interest-bearing loans through a new version of the Klarna Visa card rolling out later this year.

Banking Circle US is the first company to use Connecticut's uninsured bank charter for wholesale and merchant activities. This kind of charter makes sense for payments firms, but questions persist about overall viability.

Ant Group's Alipay is linking to Pakistan's NayaPay as part of a push to support tourism to China, Revolut has obtained a license from Mexico's National Banking and Securities Commission, and more.

Net charge-offs at the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank increased by more than 80% in the first quarter compared with a year earlier. BofA executives say that the rising losses were in line with the bank's risk appetite.

Bellwether Community Credit Union's partnership with the New York ad tech firm Prizeout is working to build out gift card programs and generate added sources of non-interest income.

When its broad-spectrum payment card fraud-detection filters generated too many false alarms, FIS implemented AI to help banks prioritize which types of fraud to investigate first, in part by muting lower-risk notifications.

The Toronto-based bank has spent the last two years gathering client input and building a platform for customers to manage the flow of payments and receivables, pay taxes in the most efficient jurisdictions, balance currency risks and more.

Industry body UK Finance is expanding its pilot of an experimental shared ledger to track banking payments, hoping to join some of the dots in the nascent world of digital assets.

Companies are taking vastly different approaches to how they implement generative AI, whether it's to empower employees or to overhaul the way they bring products to market.

With the cruise industry gaining steam after the pandemic, it no longer made sense to force passengers to sign up for a credit card with paper forms. The new process allows applicants to obtain credit they can use in any port — including Carnival's upcoming private island in the Bahamas.

Business trade groups are expected to prevail in getting an emergency stay to stop the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's $8 late fee rule from going into effect on May 14. However, the lawsuit would still have many steps to go after such a decision.

There are a lot of misconceptions about how the payments industry uses generative AI. Jodie Kelley, chief executive of the Electronic Transactions Association, separates the reality from fiction.