Thursday , December 25, 2025

John Stewart

Starting as an editor on Bank Network News at Faulkner & Gray, John ultimately played a key role in starting, editing, and publishing many of F&G's flagship publications, including Credit Card Management, Card Technology, Card Marketing, and Collections & Credit Risk. Before co-founding Boland Hill Media, John was a group publisher at Thomson Media responsible for a $10 million division embracing magazines, newsletters, and Web sites.

Ransomware May Be Terrorism, But Security Pros Differ Markedly in How to Deal With It

Security professionals around the world equate ransomware attacks with terrorism, but they differ markedly from country to country in their willingness to play ball with the attackers. That’s according to survey results released Tuesday that gathered data from more than 1,500 security executives in the United States, the United Kingdom, …

Read More »

With BNPL’s Fast Rise, the CFPB Issues a Demand Letter Seeking Data From Five Firms

The explosion in buy now, pay later point-of-sale lending was bound to catch the eye of regulators sooner or later, and on Thursday the other shoe dropped with a letter sent to five leading BNPL firms from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau requesting information on their services. The five—Affirm Inc., …

Read More »

Vibes, a Provider of Mobile Marketing Tech, Launches ‘Mobile Wallet as a Channel’

As mobile-wallet technology matures, marketers are starting to look at ways to reach consumers with content that stays in the wallet as permanently as a credit or debit card. The latest move in this direction emerged Wednesday with the unveiling of “Mobile Wallet as a Channel,” a service that lets …

Read More »

Klarna Teams With GoCardless to Ease Installments Via Account-to-Account Transfers

Sweden’s Klarna AB has 21 million users in the U.S. market for its buy now, pay later app, but it wants a lot more. On Tuesday, it announced it will ease payments for its users by letting them pay off installments via direct transfers from their bank account. The service …

Read More »

Wells And HSBC Unveil a Blockchain for Faster And Cheaper Cross-Border Transfers

The world’s banking giants may or may not adopt cryptocurrencies at some point, but they are clearly looking to adopt the distributed-ledger technology that undergirds digital money. In the latest such move, Wells Fargo & Co. and HSBC Bank plc early Monday announced they have agreed to process cross-border transactions …

Read More »

As BNPL’s Allure Continues to Grow, ISOs Set Out to Mine the Merchant Potential

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. It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that providers of the service are now looking to sell the service to merchants of all sizes through the acquiring …

Read More »

Fortis Fortifies Its Position With ISVs Via Its Acquisition of VIP Integrated Payments

Fortis has proven in recent months to be one of the country’s most active payments providers when it comes to extending capabilities for independent software vendors, and now it has expanded further in that business with its acquisition of VIP Integrated Payments in a deal announced Wednesday. Terms were not …

Read More »

Eye on Crypto: Visa Launches a Consulting Unit; Nextech Links to Coinbase for Acceptance

With interest in cryptocurrency increasing at the two major card networks, it was only a matter of time before one of them launched a consulting service specializing in the subject. Visa Inc. early Wednesday announced it is launching its Global Crypto Advisory Practice as part of its existing Visa Consulting …

Read More »

With At-Pump EMV a Work in Progress, Providers Look to Mask Card Transactions With Encryption

The switchover of gasoline stations in the United States to the EMV chip card standard has been a work in progress, but now products are emerging that can secure card data at the pump through a technology known as point-to-point encryption. Payments provider ACI Worldwide Inc. early Tuesday said it …

Read More »

Tassat Scores Western Alliance Bank for Its Bank-Based Blockchain-Payment Technology

Stablecoins have come in for government scrutiny in recent weeks, but use of this blockchain-based technology to enable immediate business-to-business payments between bank clients is moving forward nonetheless. Late Thursday, Tassat Group Inc. announced Phoenix-based Western Alliance Bank will use the company’s TassatPay technology to allow business clients to pay …

Read More »
Digital Transactions