Visa


Payments round-up: 4 December 2017

Betas, big numbers and the big match. Our latest payments round-up features Emma Technologies, Yolt, and Visa and the football World Cup in 2018.

Spafinder Improves Gifting Options ahead of Holidays

Spafinder, a marketing, gifting, incentives and rewards brand owned by Blackhawk Network, has unveiled new gift card technology, expanded distribution and additional partner services to make giving the gift of spa and beauty experiences easier for consumers and businesses.

Earnings Roundup: Amex, BofA, Blackhawk, Visa

It was a busy week for second- and fiscal third-quarter earnings reports, with American Express, Bank of America and Visa all beating Wall Street expectations, and Blackhawk Network, which also beat analyst predictions, talking international growth, double-digit digital gift card sales and new partner Target set to roll out in Q3.

mVisa Takes on M-PESA with Free Domestic Mobile Money Transfers

Move over M-PESA, customers of a Visa-led bank partnership in Kenya will be able to send money to each other domestically without paying transaction fees using mVisa, and the payments network has added additional in-store merchant acceptance for the QR-code-based payment method.

Payscout Launches Virtual Reality Commerce with Visa’s Help

Retail payments have taken another step into the future. Payment processor Payscout has launched a virtual reality system that employs Visa Checkout and enables consumers to examine products before ordering them for delivery to shoppers’ homes.

Visa Bolsters Transaction Security

Visa is beefing up its Verified by Visa authentication service. The payments network said it’s upgrading its back-end to support 3-D Secure 2.0. The 3-D Secure messaging protocol was invented by the network more than 15 years ago and has become an industry standard for online authentication.

BitPay’s Visa-Branded Prepaid Card for Bitcoin Reaches Global Scale

BitPay, a 2017 Pay Award winner, said this week that it has released its BitPay Visa Prepaid Debit Card in 131 countries. The card “makes it possible for users to convert bitcoin into a spendable dollar, euro or pound balance” on the card in a matter of minutes, the company said.

The View from Finovate

Payments compete for attention with “RegTech” while an overall lull in disruption suggests that fintech could be in the eye of a storm.