Cash App, the peer-to-peer and financial services app from Block Inc., will make its first Cash App Tag embedded in a piece of clothing available Nov. 17. Cash App Tags debuted in June with a wand and now includes heart- and mini-card shaped devices. The tags are NFC-enabled, physical payment …

Consumers will keep one eye on their gift lists this holiday shopping season and the other on discounts and rewards to help pay for the gifts, suggests a new survey from Synchrony. Consumer finance specialist and issuer Synchrony says 66% of consumers plan to use retailer rewards they’ve earned to …

Affirm Holdings Inc.’s bet on its Affirm Card, a debit card that enables users to buy now and pay later, may be paying off for the BNPL provider. The number of active card users reached 6 million in the company’s fiscal first quarter ended Sept. 30, a 112% increase from …

Though still in the infant stages, agentic commerce is being readied for an expected maturation as a much-used shopping channel. Visa Inc. is taking steps to help with the release of its Agentic Commerce Benchmark. The tool, now available for anyone to use online, puts AI models through what Visa …

As a merchant-specific barometer of small-business sales activity, the Fiserv Small Business Index for October may finally be showing evidence of an upswing. In October, the index showed a 2.3% year-over-year increase among SMBs, the strongest growth since July 2025, Fiserv says. From September to October, sales were up 0.3%, …

Truist, the banking arm of Truist Financial Corp., is adding more merchant-services capabilities to its inventory with the addition of broader access to Clover point-of-sale devices and Paze, an online checkout service. Both are in addition to a new digital merchant-onboarding process. Charlotte, N.C.-based Truist says it is raising its …

With the holiday shopping season underway, consumers are likely reviewing their lists with a keen eye on their budgets, making buy now, pay later and gift cards options a consideration for many, suggests the 2026 Consumer Holiday Spending Study issued by the Electronic Transactions Association and TSG, a payments-research organization. …

With 5 million passkeys in use worldwide, as of May according to the FIDO Alliance, the authentication technology is gaining ground over traditional usernames and passwords. Merchant services company Checkout.com is the latest to adopt the technology with its use the Visa Payment Passkey. A passkey consists of a key pair that …

Point-of-sale equipment and services provider NCR Voyix Corp. has lined up Bruster’s Real Ice Cream with a multiyear deal that will see NCR Voyix provide Aloha Next POS devices and Voyix Kitchen technology on nearly 700 devices in 230 stores. Founded in 1989, Bruster’s has corporate and franchise locations; both …

Consumers victimized in financial scams and fraud tend to feel that impact not just financially, but emotionally, too, finds a new Identity Theft Resource Center report. The “2026 Consumer Impact Report” determined that, among general consumer scam victims, 33.7% experienced an adverse impact, compared to 17.3% among traditional identity theft …