The Information Age: How Credit Unions Can Maximize the Impact of Their Data
From transforming member experiences to building a culture of information literacy, data has become a catalyst for innovation at credit unions. New use cases are constantly emerging for organizations willing to explore them, and artificial intelligence will only increase their value. In a PaymentsJournal Podcast, Jeremiah Lotz, Senior Vice President of Experience Design and Enterprise […]
Visa Aims to Expand Stablecoin Usage to Gig Workers
Visa has launched a pilot program allowing freelancers and gig economy workers to receive payments in stablecoins. Building on Visa’s stablecoin cross-border project introduced last month, this initiative will test whether such payments are viable. The Visa Direct pilot lets businesses fund payouts in fiat currency while disbursing earnings directly to workers’ stablecoin wallets. It […]
Google’s Latest Weapon in the Fight Against Fraud: Litigation
In a bid to curb an escalating wave of phishing and financial fraud, Google has filed a lawsuit against a group of cybercriminals allegedly behind large-scale credential theft campaigns. These threat actors, known as the Smishing Triad, use a phishing-as-a-service toolkit called Lighthouse to develop and deploy convincing text-message scams. These fraudulent texts contain malicious […]
Empowering Merchants with Embedded Lending: How ISVs Can Optimize Revenue This Holiday Season
As the 2025 holiday season approaches, a convergence of payments technology—from embedded financial services to agentic AI—will influence consumer shopping behavior. Adobe for Business projects point-of-sale financing transactions will value $1 billion on Cyber Monday alone. Additionally, shoppers will use mobile payments for 56.1% of holiday sales, marking the first time mobile purchases exceed half […]
PayPal Brings BNPL to Canada as Holidays Approach
As more consumers feel the impact of holiday spending on their budgets, PayPal is launching its buy now, pay later service in Canada. Customers will be able to split purchases between $30 to $1,500 into four installments, as long as the merchant is a PayPal partner. One of the goals of the launch is to […]
What the CFTC Has in Store for the Crypto Industry
The Senate has moved one step closer to regulating cryptocurrencies as commodities rather than securities—a shift that would open the door to spot trading. The move aligns with the broader trend, accelerated under the Trump administration, toward easing restrictions on crypto. A new bipartisan discussion draft from the Senate Agriculture Committee would grant the Commodity […]
Evicted: Wells Fargo Stops Marketing Bilt
It was a good idea at the time. No issuer made a meaningful play to create a co-brand in the rental industry. With almost 50 million households renting their homes, couldn’t a top issuer come up with a program that rewards all parties to create a leading co-brand franchise? With top issuers offering cobranded cards […]
Visa and Mastercard’s Merchant Settlement Could Imperil Rewards Cards
After decades of contention, Visa and Mastercard are reportedly ironing out another settlement with merchants over interchange fees. According to the Wall Street Journal, the two companies may agree to incrementally lower credit card interchange fees merchants pay—from current rates of roughly 2% to 2.5% to about 0.1% over several years. While that reduction would […]
Venmo Introduces New Rewards Program
Venmo’s new rewards program Stash lets users earn rewards for activities such as receiving direct deposits or shopping with participating retail partners. However, these rewards don’t apply to the company’s flagship peer-to-peer payments service. The Venmo Debit Mastercard already offers 1% cash back on purchases made from the card balance and 2% with auto reloads. […]
Agentic Commerce Faces Many Hurdles Before It Reaches Maturity
Although artificial intelligence presents much to be excited about, a substantial technical burden remains in building out the ecosystem necessary for the vision of its biggest cheerleaders. Many companies have made agentic commerce a high priority, but the amount of work left to do is substantial, and fitting this into the modern economy is highly […]