Retailers

One thing that many parents are finding unusual this year is the amount of money being spent on school supplies during the coronavirus crisis — it’s actually going up.

Checkout-free retail is still not ready to move out of tiny spaces, though Amazon’s trying to accelerate progress through a trio of initiatives that have come to light over the past few weeks.

Advocates of allowing merchants to add a surcharge to defray the cost of credit card interchange have had to overcome network bureaucracy, state laws and even ingrained habits among the merchants themselves.

The “Just walk out” technology Amazon Go stores introduced a few years ago was revolutionary for shopping and payments, but it’s a model most supermarkets can’t easily copy, according to NCR.

Unicomer Group, Latin America’s equivalent of Best Buy, has teamed up with YellowPepper to develop a digital credit app that acts as a financial services center for underbanked and unbanked consumers.

7-Eleven’s not a quick serve restaurant chain or an e-commerce marketplace, but it still found substantial use for its app as a way to quickly address the health worries of its customers.

A rise in chargebacks has renewed a push for an independent standards body by the SPP, formed in 2018 to represent merchant groups .

Payment processor Elavon purchased Sage Pay four months ago, completing the acquisition on March 11. Two days later, Elavon's entire workforce was operating remotely as the coronavirus forced it into lockdown.

The agency's voice carries even more weight in light of the coronavirus pandemic, which has hastened the transition to digital and remote payments.

Bill Clerico created WePay during the last financial crisis, and sees a similar opportunity now. The coronavirus pandemic is affecting different markets in vastly different ways, and easing the flow of capital is just one way to provide help.