Why ‘Every Single Business’ Will Soon Be Using Embedded Payments

Consumer behavior will continue to drive payments innovation, says Alexandra Johnson, head of bank Innovation at Bank of America, in the PYMNTS eBook, “2023 Payments New Year’s Resolutions.”. The unexpected and unpredictable are becoming more common than we previously thought normal. We head into another “unprecedented” year where...

The conventional wisdom is that the shift to digital payments has led us all away from cash. Jamison Jaworski, GM-SVP of retail and Green Dot Network at Green Dot, and Nicole Haskins, vice president, electronic billing and payment solutions and innovations at Paymentus, told PYMNTS that cash is still sticky, and still is a vital payment method for millions of consumers.

Software firm ACI Worldwide says it is expanding amid a global boom in real-time payments. The expansion means ACI now covers about a third of the world’s countries that offer real-time payments services, the company said in a Wednesday (Feb. 1). “ACI now powers 25 domestic and pan-regional real-time...

“Consumer behavior has a tendency to be very durable.”. David Schneider, president of PULSE®, part of Discover® Global Network, acknowledged to Karen Webster that we’ve all gone online in the past three years to use digital payments — if we hadn’t been doing so already.

Maybe the customer was right all along in reacting cautiously to the news of easing inflation. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday (Jan. 30) that the U.S. consumer is “starting to freak out,” pointing to dipped car sales, slumping retail and decreased service-based spending as signs of pullback. With consumer spending representing 70% of the U.S. economy, any continued drop in spending could make a negative financial ripple across all sectors, and some experts are raising their recession risk predictions for the coming year.

In today’s softening economic environment, businesses need to focus on controlling what they can. That’s according to René Lacerte, BILL CEO and founder, who said Thursday (Feb. 2) during his company’s first quarter earnings call that demand for digitizing back-office operations is only growing for those small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) looking to navigate the economic uncertainties inherent to today’s macro and Main Street environments.

Online grocery retailer Akwaaba has partnered with payments orchestration firm CellPoint Digital. Akwaaba is leveraging the firm’s payments orchestration solution to optimize its operations as it expands beyond the six countries in Africa and the Middle East in which it is already active, CellPoint Digital said in a Tuesday (Jan. 31) press release.

Among banks and FinTechs, there’s recognition of the value inherent in receipt data. That granular detail can help forward-thinking firms craft and offer more customized services and products to their customers. The report “Meeting the Need for Item-Level Receipt Data: How Integration Enables Innovation,” a PYMNTS and Banyan collaboration,...

Citizens is now making Zelle available to small business customers through its mobile banking app. The financial institution said in a Wednesday (Feb. 1) press release that the peer-to-peer (P2P) payments network allows small businesses to pay and get paid quickly and easily. By using Zelle through the mobile banking...

Mastercard is working with open finance platform Ayoconnect to bolster financial inclusion in Indonesia. “With open banking, the unbanked population in Indonesia will have access to various financial products, moreover, consumers can be responsible and aware of their digital financial footprint to fully understand their financial position and spending habits to monthly payments,” Ayoconnect announced on its LinkedIn page Tuesday (Jan. 31).

Software is eating the world, with B2B enterprise solutions transforming key operations across sectors. However, for the promise of interoperable digital advances to grow into a modernized ecosystem that benefits all stakeholders, businesses must first have deep enough pockets and advanced enough pre-existing infrastructure to be able to perform and maintain these next-generation integrations.

123Loadboard has added carrier identity verification to its freight matching platform. This new feature streamlines and accelerates digital freight booking by enabling brokers and shippers to immediately determine if a carrier is a verified, legitimate business partner, 123Loadboard said in a Tuesday (Jan. 31) press release. “Our focus has always...

“There has been so much capital deployed in FinTech building out solutions that don’t actually solve real world problems.”. Philip Fayer, CEO and chair of Nuvei, told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster that the deal-making and private funding rounds in FinTech might have peaked during the pandemic. Many once-heralded disruptors have failed to live up to their promise.

Two years ago, banking-as-a-service (BaaS) provider Treasury Prime, then a startup, raised $20 million. And Wednesday (Feb. 1), the company’s embedded banking marketplace model — which brings banks, FinTechs and enterprises together to boost revenues, deposits and reach new end users — got another $40 million vote of confidence.

B2B FinTech company SendFriend has acquired U.S. compliance provider DigiPli. The move will combine DigiPli’s anti-money laundering (AML) model with SendFriend’s cross-border payments solution for financial institutions (FIs) needing access to the U.S. market, SendFriend said in a Thursday (Feb. 2) press release. With this combination, SendFriend will...

Unbanked and Mastercard have partnered to accelerate decentralized finance (DeFi) card issuance in Europe. Through this partnership, the two companies will use their existing footprint in the United Kingdom and the continent to work with Web3 organizations to enable the issuance of cryptocurrency-powered card programs, the companies said in a Thursday (Feb. 2) press release.

JPMorgan Chase is banking on digital to help grow its business in Europe. Less than 18 months after it launched its digital proposition Chase in the U.K., the global banking group is reportedly preparing to launch a digital bank in Germany, using its Berlin base, as part of a push into consumer banking in Europe.

With 2023 off to a running start, treasury is calling the shots differently, with a refined focus forged in the crucible of 2022. Julie Lubell, global head of Trends and Advisory at J.P. Morgan Payments, discussed with Karen Webster the new roadmap for investing and corporate strategies that take the triumphs and failures of the past three years and create something new.

Airswift and Cloud Payments have teamed to simplify cryptocurrency payments with Visa and Mastercard. Airswift, a crypto payments provider, announced the partnership in a Thursday (Feb. 2) news release, saying it would “enable cryptocurrency spenders with instant access to crypto at the points-of-sale” using Visa and Mastercard payment.

Moov Financial has raised $45 million in Series B to expand its money movement platform. The funding round was led by Commerce Ventures, and the new capital will be used to grow both the platform and its utilization by customers, Moov said in a Tuesday (Jan. 31) press release. “We...