global payment news roundup

Welcome to our final payments news roundup and post for this year. A new Nilson report says we can look forward to $408.5 billion in losses globally due to fraud by 2030. Community Banks are expected to create a new payments network to challenge Zelle. As CFPB probes the payments industry, opposing sides of the investigation are squaring off as the watchdog looks into industry practices. BNPL is also on tap for investigation.

Bank of America and discover shared top rating in Keynova’s annual credit card scorecard. Thales shared an interesting history of payments from clay tablets to EMV cards. Holiday gift card sales for retailers are at 114% over the same time last year. Much more ahead in this final year-end roundup.

credit cards and fraud

Card industry faces $400B in fraud losses over next decade, Nilson says
Card fraud over the next decade will cost the industry a collective $408.50 billion in losses globally, according to an annual report from the industry research firm Nilson Report. By 2030, when total payment card volume is expected to hit a whopping $79.14 trillion, the industry will lose an estimated $49.32 billion to fraud. Read more…

CHUCK takes on Zelle

Community Banks form new payments network to take on Zelle
According to the Alloy Labs Alliance, a consortium of community banks will announce the launch of CHUCK™, an open network for instant payments. The network will enable consumers to: “Send money from their banking app (desktop or mobile) and let recipients choose where they want the money to go, including some popular payment networks. Financial institutions now have a choice for providing instant payment capabilities and don’t have to settle for an expensive, restrictive, and closed network.” Read more…

CFPB props payments industry

Tech trade group criticizes CFPB payments probe
A trade group representing tech companies asked the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to explain how the agency’s inquiry fits within its authority. The CFPB has ordered Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Square and PayPal to provide detailed information about their “products, plans, and practices.” The agency also plans to study the payments businesses of Chinese tech companies, including WeChat Pay and Alipay. Consumers and businesses spend nearly $10 trillion annually on payments. Read more…

BNPL growing fast

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau opens inquiry into “buy now, pay later” credit
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a series of orders to five companies offering “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) credit. The orders to collect information on the risks and benefits of these fast-growing loans went to Affirm, Afterpay, Klarna, PayPal, and Zip. The CFPB is concerned about accumulating debt, regulatory arbitrage, and data harvesting in a consumer credit market already quickly changing with technology. Read more…

60% of consumers prefer physical gift cards

Gift card sales grow 114% during holidays for retailers
Gift card sales increased 114% from November through mid-December, compared with this same period last year, according to Square’s data based on physical and e-gift card sales from 10s of thousands of US retailers. While most top online retailers mention gift cards on their homepages, only 37 of the Top 100 prominently feature the popular last-minute gift. Read more… 

Bank of America and Discover top credit cards

Bank of America and Discover share No. 1 digital ranking among credit card issuers according to Keynova Group’s Q4 2021 Scorecard
For the first time since 2014, a tie occurred at first place as Bank of America matched the overall score of Discover, the Scorecard leader for the past seven years. The Scorecard shows issuers are retooling digital selection tools and applications while enhancing their card products to address competition from a growing set of fintech challengers. Read more…

history of payments

History of payment cards – from clay tablets to EMV cards
We live in a transactional world – and always have done – with payment for goods and services having taken some interesting shapes over the years. The notion of credit is just about as old as those original payment methods, with early economies as far back as the Bronze Age seeing lines of credit extended because, for example, the time between planting and harvesting a crop – and harvesting wealth too – was long. The first recorded credit card of sorts was identified in ancient Mesopotamia when that civilization’s people used clay tablets to trade with their neighbors. Read more…

Pantera Global Technology

Introducing invoicing and payment processing with Pantera Tools
Pantera Tools is launching a new, direct invoicing feature for current users to consolidate the systems used to run their business. The invoicing and payment processing features provide General Contractors and Subcontractors the ability to consolidate project management, invoicing, field tracking, and document storage within one software, at a fraction of the cost. Read more…

SMB growth

92% of online SMB’s saw sales growth in 2021
Many small and medium-sized e-commerce businesses have seen their sales numbers rise in 2021. Up to 1 in 5 companies had a sales growth of at least 40%. However, these companies also faced several challenges. For 21% of SMB companies, sales were up by at least 40%. Most companies (34%) saw a sales increase of 10 to 20%, followed by 33%, which increased 20 to 40%. Read more…

Amazon shopping cart

Amazon teams up with Barclays on first foray into UK buy now, pay later market
Amazon has teamed up with Barclays and called its buy now, payer later venture “Instalments.” Unlike other buy now, pay later providers, it will charge interest over the payment period. Users can purchase up to 100 and pay back over three through 48 months. Barclays will charge 10.9% interest during the loan installment. Read more…

Visa logo

Visa study finds digital payments are the preferred way in the US to send money abroad
According to a new Visa survey, almost a quarter (23%) of surveyed US adults have sent money from the US to another country, and nearly two-thirds (65%) of those remittance users plan to send money to another country to celebrate the holiday season this year. Globally, it is estimated that 800 million people receive money from family or friends to pay for food, utilities and education. Read more…

happy holidays

On behalf of the publisher Douglas Hall and me (Jeff Domansky), we wish readers, payments industry colleagues, and your staff a happy holiday and a prosperous year ahead in 2022. Cheers!

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