April, 2025

• 1 April

  Has the Time Come for Stablecoins?

  

  The answer to our titular question may be yes, and sooner than you think. A leading merchant association and a group representing stablecoin interests have thrown their weight behind efforts to bring stablecoins into the U.S. payments mainstream. The move by the Merchant Payments Coalition and the Payment Choice Coalition …

March, 2025

• 1 March

  The Genius of POS Development

  

  Global Payments Inc. last month began showcasing a point-of-sale payment technology it called its Genius platform. The big processor said the technology is a revamp of a previous product and would roll out domestically in May as a common brand, with an international rollout late this year. That Genius brand …

February, 2025

• 1 February

  Is This the Year of the Stablecoin?

  

  Remember stablecoins? Some experts lately have been pointing to 2025 as a breakthrough year for this digital currency, which is generated by a blockchain but carries a value tied to a national currency, such as the dollar. That link allows users to deploy digital dollars without fearing the wild swings …

January, 2025

• 1 January

  You Can’t Make This Up

  

  You’ve got to hand it to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They don’t miss a trick—though many in the payments industry would argue there are at least some cases the bureau should take a pass on. Maybe because there’s no trick in the first place. Take the case of Google …

December, 2024

• 1 December

  What’s Going on With Bitcoin?

  

  After some months of quietude, digital currencies are back in the headlines—or at any rate Bitcoin is. In case you haven’t noticed, that’s because the leading cryptocurrency as of the third week of November was pushing toward $95,000—not only an all-time high but also, not so long ago, thought to …

November, 2024

• 1 November

  How Soon Will Real Time Payments Be Routine?

  

  Have you been following developments in the world of faster payments? Probably the most exciting subchapter in this saga is the development and deployment of networks that can deliver real-time transactions, sometimes referred to as instant payments. But offering the capability for real-time transfers is one thing. Hanging over the …

October, 2024

• 1 October

  The Lesson From GPR Cards

  

  As the payments business attracts headlines for such innovations as open banking and account-to-account transfers—and rightly so—it’s easy to forget what’s going on with some fundamental services that keep finding new uses. That’s a pity, since focusing on such products is a useful reminder of the industry’s ingenuity. Take, for …

September, 2024

• 1 September

  The Next Stage for Real Time

  

  Are you ready for real time? Ready or not, here it comes—in more than one guise, and in far more than one application. When FedNow debuted commercially 14 months ago, the story mainly focused on the general concept of immediate money transfers. But since then, the payments industry has been …

August, 2024

• 1 August

  The Many Uses of Contactless Payment

  

  And you thought contactless technology was just for payments. Turns out, while it’s enabling more and more payments at the point of sale, the technology is offering even greater potential. Contactless transactions were supercharged by the pandemic, and now slightly more than half of U.S. cardholders are using the technology …

July, 2024

• 1 July

  The Lesson From eBay

  

  If, as seems to be the case, the future belongs to e-commerce, does that mean the future also belongs to the corollary of e-commerce, digital-payment apps? We chewed on this question as we pondered the significance of eBay Inc.’s decision last month to ditch American Express, and then, just days …