High profile companies like Facebook, Square and PayPal have brought attention to using cryptocurrency for payments — but speed is more important than buzz in getting stores to view crypto as tender, according to a group of developers who are building connections to merchants.

The 5-year-old company, which recently raised $131 million, says its strong growth reflects the timeliness of its mission: helping consumers who live paycheck to paycheck build wealth.

Marqeta, a payments startup backed by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Visa Inc., hired underwriters for a planned 2021 initial public offering, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Stripe Inc. is in talks to raise a new funding round valuing it higher than its last private valuation of $36 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

For years, business models based around micropayments have been touted as an alternative to advertising, offering a new form of revenue for all kinds of content creators, enabling users to pay for the exact quantity of services they consume. They have even been suggested as a way to create alternative insurance products, for example forms of car insurance where drivers pay per journey.

Organizations need complete control over which network access privileges are assigned to each user or role, says Pulse Secure's Rene Papp.

CEO Wendy Cai-Lee says Piermont Bank can do it all for financial technology firms: be their commercial banker, be their banking-as-a-service provider and develop APIs and other cutting-edge products for them.

Big banks and other financial firms predict the cost of warding off cybercriminals will keep climbing in 2021 as they work to secure digital financial services popularized by the pandemic.

The number and type of channels for customer support are exploding – with Facebook Messenger, Apple Business Chat, and WhatsApp Business among the most recent additions. And channels are evolving, says Genpact's Jason Osborne.

By gathering pools of customer data ahead of the shopping surge, retailers can capitalize on the increase in shoppers by identifying the right customers and making every engagement count, says Tealium's Sav Khetan.

Many countries are positioning themselves as a destination for fintechs seeking EU-wide licenses as the U.K. leaves the EU. Following Brexit, U.K. electronic money and payments institution licenses across the EU won’t be passportable across the EU.

Finland’s OP Financial has announced that it will be launching a biometric payment card pilot in the Nordic countries in the second half of 2021.

Payoneer has integrated its payment orchestration platform into its core services, a year after obtaining the cloud-based technology through the acquisition of German payments provider Optile.

In an open letter, industry veteran Thomas Vartanian outlines the steps the administration can take to encourage innovation, better detect cyber threats and modernize regulation.

While digital pay innovation was once seen as a “nice-to-have” benefit, it's quickly becoming integral to business survival, says LendingFront's Jorge Sun.

Software developers and ISOs must go into payment partnerships with a full understanding of what capabilities their merchants are seeking, including flexibility and choice, says NMI's Nick Starai.

Within the payments industry, Wirecard as a brand has become almost like Enron — but an exec at Railsbank says the German processor's fall from grace masks talent and innovation that can thrive elsewhere and help forge new paths to financial services.

The success of some fintechs in getting bank charters this year only underscores how onerous the process remains for many others. That’s unlikely to change unless policymakers reconsider what it means to be a bank.

The complaint charges the fintech startup with misleading customers about the interest they'd receive on deposits and the level of access to their money. It seeks an unspecified amount of consumer relief in addition to other remedies.

PCI has issued guidelines that are helpful, says PXP Financial's Koen Vanpraet.