January, 2022

• 1 January

  Regulate Now, Pay Later

  

  The pandemic has lent momentum to a number of trends in digital payments, but one of the biggest is the buy now, pay later option. The installment plan isn’t new, but providers have offered it as a way of giving merchants another payment channel as Covid-wary consumers crowded online. With …

December, 2021

• 1 December

  Searching for Stability

  

  Have you used Bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency lately? Or have you used one at all? If you did, was it worth the same at the time of the transaction as it was when you obtained it? Chances are, its value had fluctuated, maybe by a very wide margin. Bitcoin, …

November, 2021

• 1 November

  A Ray of Light?

  

  The past 20 months have been difficult, to say the least, and the virus behind all the headline misery is still with us. And that’s without accounting for Delta and other variants of this plague. One of the most frustrating logistical problems created by Covid has been the shortages of …

October, 2021

• 1 October

  Whither BNPL?

  

  It takes nothing away from the phenomenal arc the buy now, pay later trend is describing across the payments landscape to say that, in essence, it’s something quite old dressed up in modern duds. After all, installment credit in retail has been around for decades. But the genius of the …

September, 2021

• 1 September

  Summer’s Heat Is on Card Costs

  

  You could be forgiven for neglecting the battle between merchants, on the one hand, and banks and payments networks on the other, over acceptance costs for payment cards. After all, the conflict is a long-running affair, and other issues have crowded onto the scene in recent months. But this summer …

August, 2021

• 1 August

  A Remarkable Industry

  

  Welcome to Digital Transactions’ annual Buyer’s Guide. Here, you’ll find just about all the products and services—along with the vendors and their contact information—you’ll need to run your business. Or to start one, for that matter. We have found over the years that the payments industry, particularly in the United …

July, 2021

• 1 July

  Asset or Money?

  

  It has been fashionable in the payments industry to dismiss cryptocurrencies as exotic flora and fauna that can’t begin to compete with the sturdiness of, shall we say, real money. And indeed, the oldest crypto coins have been in operation now for more than a decade with little to show …

June, 2021

• 1 June

  A Humble Homecoming

  

  Libra—er, sorry, Diem—is coming home to the United States, a bit bruised but also a bit wiser than when it left. Bruised but unbowed, the Facebook-inspired blockchain initiative announced in May it is quitting Switzerland and linking up with La Jolla, Calif.-based Silvergate Bank as it plots the next stage …

April, 2021

• 30 April

  The Skunk at the Party

  

  The craze for point-of-sale installment lending—a trend popularly known as buy now, pay later—has enjoyed a honeymoon among merchants and consumers alike. The option, which lets consumers receive the goods in their cart but pay for them later over a few interest-free installments, came along just as pandemic fears threatened …
• 1 April

  The Age of Miracles

  

  Sometimes you get what you want if you just ask—and if you have the right people asking for you. Just before we went to press with this issue, Visa and Mastercard released the news that they were holding off on planned interchange-rate adjustments for another year, until April 2022. Their …