Interview with KeyBank's Head of Commercial Product & Innovation, Jon Briggs
We sat down with Jon Briggs, EVP and Head of Commercial Product & Innovation at KeyBank to learn more about his journey through KeyBank’s varying lines of business and how KeyBank is tackling merchant acquiring strategy differently compared to other large financial institutions. continue reading →
Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) gained ground in recent years as an alternative form of credit for online retail purchases. As more and more big players continue to enter the BNPL industry, competition in the space is intensifying. PayPal entered the sector by launching its first BNPL offering – ‘Pay in 4’ – in 2020, and expanded its suite of products by rolling out another BNPL product, ‘Pay Monthly’, in 2022.
Splitit Payments Ltd., a white-label buy now, pay later provider, has partnered with AliPay to offer Splitit’s Pay After Delivery option to consumers shopping on the AliExpress e-commerce marketplace. Pay After Delivery allows consumers to make a purchase using a credit card, then pay for it after delivery. The payment option is being offered at AliPay’s request, a Splitit spokesperson says. AliExpress is an e-commerce marketplace owned by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., which operates the Alibaba.com marketplace and holds a 33% stake in Alipay.
Rapid changes in the payments space have given regulators and legislators plenty to focus on, and this year, that’s likely to include buy now, pay later, peer-to-peer payment fraud and swipe fees. “There’s just much more activity and concern about these payments issues than has been true maybe at any other time,” said Doug Kantor, general counsel for the National Association of Convenience Stores.
JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. managed to beat Wall Street’s reduced expectations for their fourth-quarter profits as higher interest rates boosted income from loans. The banks turned in stronger-than-expected results despite a slowdown in overall deal activity such as home-mortgage loans and initial public offerings. Bank stocks moved into positive territory in midday trades after shaking off losses earlier in the session.
India’s dealings with American card networks has been frosty. Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. have grumbled to Washington about the lack of a level playing field as New Delhi has cajoled banks to shift to a homegrown alternative. For their alleged failure to comply with local data-storage rules, Mastercard, Discover Financial Services and American Express Co. have run into regulatory trouble in the second-most-populous nation. Recurring payments from the country have been a disaster for failing too often.
On Wednesday morning, Bank of America customers began reporting issues with payments processed through the money transfer service Zelle, which led to money disappearing from their accounts. Many customers took to Twitter to express their outrage as they began to notice the missing funds. One user tweeted, “I almost lost my mind when I saw $2,000 was missing from my account.”
Lightspeed Commerce Inc., the one-stop commerce platform for merchants around the world to simplify, scale, and create exceptional customer experiences, today announced a reorganization to streamline the Company's operating model while continuing to focus on profitable growth. After several years of strong performance, this reorganization represents the next deliberate step in executing Lightspeed's strategy to unify all of its acquired companies and products.
Intuit, the global financial technology platform that makes TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks, and Mailchimp, expanded availability of the Intuit QuickBooks Business Network to millions of small and mid-market businesses in the U.S., creating one of the largest business-to-business (B2B) networks aimed at accelerating and automating B2B payments and improving overall cash flow. B2B payments remain one of the largest unsolved challenges small and mid-market businesses face and that fintech innovation is well-positioned to address.
In recent years, working for, or banking with, a traditional financial institution was decidedly uncool. Far cooler was working for or banking with one of the many fintech startups that seemed to thumb their nose at stodgy bank brands. Then the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates, stocks tanked, and a lot of fintech outfits that appeared to be doing well began looking far less hardy and hale. The question begged now is whether fintech as a theme has lost its mojo.
Digital currencies, such as central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and stablecoins, are the natural evolution of money and payments, Bank of America said in a research report on Tuesday. “CBDCs do not change the definition of money, but will likely change how and when value is transferred over the next 15 years,” analysts led by Alkesh Shah wrote, adding that central bank digital currencies have “the potential to revolutionize global financial systems and may be the most significant technological advancement in the history of money.”
Crypto lender Genesis Global Trading Inc. is preparing to file for bankruptcy within days, according to people familiar with the matter. Genesis, owned by the crypto conglomerate Digital Currency Group, is in the final stage of preparing paperwork before it files for chapter 11 protection, said the people with knowledge of the matter. The crypto lender has been considering filing for bankruptcy for months and the firm laid off 30% of its staff earlier this month to “navigate unprecedented industry challenges,” a spokesperson said.
People are addicted to credit cards — and it’s no wonder, given the lucrative rewards that many of them offer. But for merchants, credit cards tend to be less appealing. That’s because they’re on the hook for interchange fees, or transaction fees a merchant’s bank must pay whenever a customer uses a card to make a purchase. Some interchange fees can exceed 3%.
Loyalty programs and the opportunity to personalize the shopping experience is a key focus for many major retailers this year. That’s in part due to the choppy economic waters they’re steering through as we move into 2023. The tightening of consumer purse strings and flat inflation-adjusted shopper incomes points to the need for brands to “dial up” loyalty, said Rachel Dalton, head of retailer insights at data analytics company Kantar, who interviewed Target’s EVP and chief growth officer, Christina Hennington, on Tuesday.
You can always get an early sense for how retailers did over the holiday season by their mood in January. If they’re crying into drinks you know it was a miserable holiday season, and if they’re toasting the town you know they did really well. Bad news like Bed Bath and Beyond’s warnings of potential imminent bankruptcy and Party City’s announcement aside, this year’s NRF was definitely more on the “toasting the town” side of the spectrum. This means retailers have budget approval to improve their technology capabilities.
Excited attendees packed out the keynote session hall to hear Walmart U.S. president and CEO John Furner in conversation with Harvard Business School’s Dr. James Cash during The Huddle With John Furner. In a video recording format of Furner’s popular podcast, The Huddle, the two industry leaders took stock of the current state of retail, highlighting opportunities and acknowledging the challenges on the horizon. “Loyalty in retail is the absence of something better,” Furner shared, leaving attendees with plenty to consider about what it means to be better — or even the best — in the retail industry today.
May require account to read. Starbucks and Kroger, two retail brands that have been at the forefront of mobile payments and self-checkout technology, respectively, are deploying new systems to further cut friction at the point of sale. Both companies are taking drastically different approaches to updating their checkouts, but with the same goal: cut down on the time consumers spend making a payment by reducing the points of friction that are in the store's direct control.
PayPal is sending out data breach notifications to thousands of users who had their accounts accessed through credential stuffing attacks that exposed some personal data. Credential stuffing are attacks where hackers attempt to access an account by trying out username and password pairs sourced from data leaks on various websites.
US authorities have charged the Russian founder of Hong Kong-based crypto exchange Bitzlato, which it says was used to launder hundreds of millions of dollars in criminal proceeds from the darknet. Bitzlato majority owner Anatoly Legkodymov, who lives in China, was arrested by the FBI in Miami on Tuesday, accusing him of operating a "high-tech financial hub that, in his own words, catered to 'known crooks'".
Doomsday forecasts for the U.S. economy have flooded in over the past year amid the Federal Reserve’s battle against inflation. Predictions of an impending “severe recession” from the likes of Elon Musk, or even “another variant of a Great Depression” from New York University economist Nouriel Roubini, have led most Americans to believe a downturn is inevitable this year. A number of U.S. bank CEOs, including JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon and Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan, confirmed their fears about the economy’s future last week as well, arguing in earnings reports that a “mild recession” is likely on the way.
Holiday sales came in below industry expectations, as shoppers felt pinched by inflation and rising interest rates, according to data from the National Retail Federation. Sales during November and December grew 5.3% year over year to $936.3 billion, below the major trade group’s prediction for growth of between 6% and 8% over the year prior. In early November, NRF had projected spending of between $942.6 billion and $960.4 billion.
The US has been in debt and arguing about it for its entire existence. The only two years in US history when there was no debt came as then-President Andrew Jackson was blowing up the banking system and immediately preceded the Panic of 1837 and a major depression. In recent decades, disagreements over raising the debt ceiling (the maximum amount of money the Treasury is authorized to borrow to pay its bills) have grown along with the size of the national debt.
You might be reading this story on your phone right now. You might do just about everything on your phone: conversation, work, entertainment, news and shopping, among other things. And every business owner wants to grab your attention while you are there. A new player is entering the chat: video commerce. Video commerce is one of the “Big Ideas” featured on stage at the 2023 National Retail Federation Big Show Conference in New York.
Discover Financial Services reported net income of $1.0 billion or $3.77 per diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2022, as compared to a net income of $1.1 billion or $3.64 per diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2021. "Our outstanding results in 2022 were driven by record loan growth and margin expansion, factors that should sustain strong revenue growth into next year," said Roger Hochschild, CEO and President of Discover.
Mastercard and Citizens announced an expanded partnership, making Mastercard the exclusive payments network across Citizens’ credit, debit and commercial portfolios, as well as services provider in the U.S. With shared values and vision, Citizens and Mastercard are united in the goal to provide access, inclusion and innovation to the communities they serve. “Mastercard is thrilled to enhance our partnership with Citizens to become their exclusive payments provider across all product portfolios,” said Linda Kirkpatrick, president, North America at Mastercard.
Desjardins Group, the largest financial cooperative in North America, will transition its credit card processing to Fiserv, Inc., a leading global provider of payments and financial services technology solutions. By streamlining management of consumer card, commercial card, prepaid card, and business lines of credit portfolios onto a single unified platform, Fiserv is enabling Desjardins to create synergies across products and power innovative new offerings for its consumer members and business clients.
NMI, a leading full commerce enablement technology company, released its inaugural Payments Innovation Pulse Report that focuses on consumer sentiment around the latest payment innovations and how these opinions impact merchants, technology partners and financial institutions. To take the pulse of consumer payments preferences and experiences on the latest payments tools and methods and their willingness to try new payment innovations, NMI surveyed 1,000 U.S. consumers in October 2022.
Marqeta, the global modern card issuing platform, announced its new web push provisioning product. With web push provisioning, Marqeta customers can reduce friction at the point-of-sale and enable their users to pay directly from their mobile wallets without requiring them to download a mobile application.
ACI Worldwide, a global leader in mission-critical, real-time payments software, announced the launch of ACI Instant Pay, a new real-time payments solution that enables merchants in the U.S. to accept online, mobile and in-store payments instantly. The expansion of ACI's real-time payments software solutions to merchants reinforces ACI’s global leadership in powering domestic and pan-regional real-time schemes reaching billions worldwide.
Nuvei, the Canadian fintech company and VTEX, the global enterprise digital commerce platform for premier brands and retailers, announced a global partnership that will provide greater flexibility and customization for retailers as VTEX expands deeper into Latin America and new markets across Asia Pacific, North America and Europe. To help address the changing dynamics of global retail business, VTEX is always looking at ways to help its premier client brands and retailers sell faster and more effectively.
Real Salt Lake of Major League Soccer has selected leading commerce technology provider Shift4 to power payments at America First Field and Zions Bank Stadium to help further enhance the gameday experience for the fans of the Claret-&-Cobalt. Shift4’s end-to-end payment solution will enhance the fan experience at these venues in numerous ways. It will enable guests to pay for all transactions within the stadiums using a single account, personalize offers and experiences, and provide multiple payment options.
Paysafe, a leading payments platform, announced its expansion into the new Ohio online sports-betting market after entering the Maryland iGaming space in Q4 2022. Paysafe is now powering play safely for a range of sportsbooks in the Midwestern state by providing their players with a comprehensive suite of payment options, including credit card and debit card deposits, Paysafe’s Skrill digital wallet for both deposits and payouts, and other solutions.
European payments fintech Nexi has announced a five-year partnership with IBM to help modernise its core payment processing platform. Nexi will use IBM z16 technology and IBM Storage System to help elevate customer experience across its expanding client base, which includes more than 1,000 financial institutions and over 2mn merchants. Together with its partner banks, the Milan-based fintech manages around 170mn payment cards and 29bn acquiring and transactions across Europe.
Integrating Plaid’s secure account-to-account (A2A) bank connectivity technology with PayJunction’s payment gateway will allow B2B and B2C businesses to easily extend to their customers a simple way to pay for goods and services via direct bank transfer, whether online or via invoicing. PayJunction routes the transactions via the low-cost ACH processing rails, which can result in significant savings versus payments made with credit and debit cards.
Ingenico, the global leader in payments acceptance solutions, and Fujitsu Frontech North America, through its subsidiary Fulcrum Biometrics, Inc., unveiled the world’s most secure, accurate and seamless biometric payment solution based on palm vein identification. This innovation enables merchants to speed up check-out, minimize the risks of fraud, and streamline the customer experience.
ThriveCart, the leader in shopping cart, sales funnels and educational course creation technology used by small and medium businesses worldwide, announced it secured a $35 million investment from LTV SaaS Growth Fund. ThriveCart also named e-commerce industry veteran Kevin McKeand as CEO. Josh Bartlett, ThriveCart founder, will continue to drive product innovation, championing the company's focus on providing growth tools for ThriveCart customers.
MangoPay, a European payment technology provider for marketplaces and platforms, is to hire 250 people this year in a rare reversal of the current trend for layoffs across the tech industry. The move comes as the firm reports 35% of year-on-year growth and total 2022 transaction value reaching over €11.3 billion. The company says it onboarded 243 new customers this year and has already hired 100 new staff across the business, including four C-suite appointments.