Overall holiday sales figures may be a mixed bag so far this year, but gift card sales for the season are on track to hit news sales peaks in the U.S. and the U.K., aided by an uptick in online sales, plus growing popularity for digital gift cards, new data suggest.
The financially underserved market in the U.S. generated approximately $103 billion in fee and interest revenue in 2013, based on consumer usage volume of $1.3 trillion in financial products and services, according to a new study from the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) and Core Innovation Capital.
After a strong showing in consumer bitcoin spending on Black Friday weekend, Blade Financial yesterday launched what it’s calling the first B2B payment processing platform that extends traditional debit card programs to bitcoin businesses.
Blackhawk Network this week announced a new distribution deal with the U.S. Postal Service, introducing the company’s gift card malls to select post offices in time for the holiday season.
NACHA, the Herndon, Va.-based electronic payments association, and the European Central Bank (ECB) independently are taking steps to speed up the payments process with the goal of same-day settlement.
During the feverish shopping on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, even bitcoin had its mad moment.
With gift cards expected to be a top seller this season, according to a survey by the National Retail Federation, Sprint, GiftCards.com and CashStar are making it even easier for consumer to do their holiday gift card shopping online and on their phones.
U.K.-based mobile money provider Monitise plc has signed a 7-year agreement with Virgin Money to develop digital banking products and services for Virgin Money customers.
Russia is scheduled to begin testing its new National Payment System (NPS) with eight banks next week, and the platform is scheduled to become fully operational in the first quarter of next year.
The FFIEC’s recently updated BSA/AML Examination Manual is emphasizing—as it has in the past—that the buck stops with issuing banks in terms of ultimate responsibility for BSA/AML compliance for prepaid access products, regardless of agreements or contracts with other players in the value chain.
Millions of dollars keep flowing into the payments industry as investors recently showed support for advanced payments cards from Dynamics Inc., Stripe’s e-commerce solutions and a digital-only Atom Bank.
The Reserve Bank of India has issued guidelines for licensing small finance banks in the private sector to, among other objectives, better meet the needs of unbanked and underbanked populations and to provide credit to small businesses, farmers and small industries.
Department store Kohl’s Corp. expects to enjoy the fruits of combining a mobile payments app with loyalty this holiday season.
Holiday shoppers with PayPal accounts took to their mobile devices in droves last week, with PayPal Inc. reporting a 56 percent surge in mobile sales volume over its platform on Thanksgiving Day compared to last year and a 62 percent jump on Black Friday.
Europe’s biggest payments company is coming to the U.S. Stockholm-based e-payments provider Klarna has announced it will earmark at least $100 million for a U.S. expansion, including a new operations center in Columbus, Ohio.
SpendSmart Networks is pulling the plug on its prepaid card business, citing poor performance amid increasing regulatory pressure and associated costs.
PULSE Network LLC, a Discover Financial Services company, filed a lawsuit against Visa Inc. late last month alleging antitrust law violations it says undercut PIN debit competition. Meanwhile, Target’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit related to its 2013 data breach was denied.
China UnionPay continues to take steps to make it easier for its customers to make payments on their mobile devices.
U.K.-based mobile money provider Monitise plc is getting a major capital infusion, landing a £49.2 million (US$77 million) investment from the trio of MasterCard, Santander Group and Telefónica.
Debate on the EU Payments Package, composed of the revised Payment Services Directive and the Regulation on Interchange Fees, recommenced in Brussels on Nov. 19. Although the two pieces of legislation are part of one “package,” they’re at different stages in the legislative process, and depending on how they progress, the transition into law could be smooth for the industry—or not.
While online retailers roll their Black Friday bargains over to Cyber Monday, research shows that an increasing amount of online sales are being made via smartphones and tablets, and this trend is continuing – but this does not mean smaller crowds, as consumers are also switching to ‘click & collect’ services.
Skrill Group, a global provider of online payment technologies to merchants and consumers, has added significant reach to its online payment voucher provider paysafecard with the acquisition of Ukash.
Holiday shopping over the Thanksgiving weekend was slightly lower than the previous year, according to a survey by the National Retail Federation.
UGO Wallet, an NFC mobile wallet developed by UGO Mobile Solutions and Canadian banks President’s Choice Financial and TD Bank Group, launched last week and is available to customers of Canada’s three largest wireless carriers.
Is it a surprise to anyone in the payments industry that the word “contactless” was a finalist this year as Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year?
Monitise plans to raise £49.2 million through extensions of its relationships with Santander, Telefónica and MasterCard. The money raised will be used to ‘support the development and accelerated roll-out of its global platform capabilities’.
Payments industry participants are getting a taste of what compliance might be like under its new regulator the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR).
The payments industry is only starting to digest the potential consequences of the CFPB’s sweeping proposed rule on prepaid accounts.
Gift card exchange Cardpool is partnering with LevelUp to make the most coveted gift—the gift card—more valuable by enabling LevelUp users to exchange unused and partially used gift cards for LevelUp credits at more than 14,000 participating merchants.
The recent launch of the Apple Pay wallet app on the latest iterations of iPhone handsets has created a flurry of activity among m-payments providers trying to attract as many consumers as they can to their solutions.
Card marketing and production service provider Arroweye Solutions has been selected by American Banker as one of the Top 100 worldwide technology providers to the financial services industry.
Consumer Reports recently published a Naughty and Nice List based on company practices and policies. Discover made the Nice list by becoming the first major credit-card issuer to provide free FICO scores from TransUnion on monthly statements of qualifying cardholders.
YapStone, a global provider of Web and mobile payment solutions, has been named to the Deloitte 2014 Technology Fast 500, an annual ranking of the 500 fastest-growing North American companies in the technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and clean technology sectors.
In a new study, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City is providing some much-needed data to the long-standing debate over whether prepaid cards should be permitted to offer an overdraft feature.
Virtual Piggy Inc. has unveiled a new prepaid card targeted for use by teens, who can use the card to shop at brick-and-mortar stores within limits set and managed by their parents.
Payment card issuers looking to use Visa Inc.’s tokenization service will be able to do so with no fee until at least the end of 2015—and maybe further, according to the payment network’s CEO.
The CFPB expanded its budget, number of employees and its complaint volume in fiscal year 2014, according to its annual report.
Lost among last week’s excitement of the issuance of the long-awaited NPRM on prepaid was another CFPB publication that’s a must read—“Study of Prepaid Account Agreements.”
Simultaneously with the release of its 870-page prepaid account proposal last week, the CFPB issued a “Study of Prepaid Account Agreements.”
Prepaid industry leaders, which included representatives from InComm, Blackhawk Network and Green Dot, met with members of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging during a hearing yesterday to outline how they’re working to prevent fraudsters from using prepaid debit cards to swindle consumers, particularly phone scams perpetrated against the elderly.
