Despite the slowdown in manufacturing as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, shipments of wearable devices, which are often fitted for payments, are forecast to hit 396 million units in 2020, a 14.5% increase from 2019, says International Data Corp.  During the first half of 2020, 38% of all wearable …

ActiveCampaign, a customer-experience automation provider, is teaming with Stripe Inc. and PayPal Holdings Inc. to integrate its software in the platforms of both payment providers. The integrations will enable merchants to connect their Stripe or PayPal accounts to ActiveCampaign through native integrations and use payer data to coordinate personalized customer …

Mastercard Inc. announced Wednesday plans to expand its Digital First card program in North America by partnering with payment processors to provide guidelines for consumer experience with digital payment cards.  Processors Mastercard is partnering with include CoreCard Software Inc., FIS Inc., Fiserv Inc., Galileo Processing Inc., i2c Inc., Marqeta Inc., …

Payments provider Paya Inc. has signed an agreement to acquire The Payment Group (TPG), a provider of integrated payments to utilities and government. TPG’s software allows consumers to digitally pay their court and utility bills. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close in October, were not disclosed. As …

PureWrist, a contactless-transaction technology provider, on Thursday debuted PureWrist Go, a reloadable flexible bracelet with an embedded EMV chip that allows consumers to make prepaid contactless transactions. PureWrist GO, which retails for $25, plus the amount preloaded on to device, is the flagship product on the PureWrist platform. New York …

VSoft Corp., a provider of digital-banking and payment solutions to financial institutions, on Wednesday launched the Bread network, a peer-to-peer, consumer-to-business, business-to-consumer, and business-to-business payment network.  Bread enables real-time payments between financial institutions within its network. Money sent and money received is kept within the users’ respective financial-institution accounts, as …

Stimulus-check fraud is on the rise, says Advanced Fraud Solutions, a High Point, N.C.-based provider of fraud-mitigation tools. Of 1 million checks screened by AFS, 41,000 have been identified as fraudulent, the company says. Legitimate checks were issued by the U.S. Department of the Treasury starting in March as part …

With consumer demand for personalized digital experiences growing, NCR Corp. announced Monday it is integrating Kasisto Inc.’s KAI digital experience platform in its digital-banking platform. Kasisto’s KAI platform uses automated conversational banking technology to interact with consumers through digital channels in a human-like way. This allows banks to deploy intelligent, …

PayPal Holdings Inc. and Visa Inc. are adding cross-border payments to an agreement to route payments made through PayPal’s Instant Transfer Service through the Visa Direct platform. The expanded agreement will allow consumers and small businesses to send or receive money to or from a Visa card account in real-time …

Payments provider FIS Inc. on Wednesday began rolling out Access Worldpay, a suite of application programming interfaces intended to make it easier and quicker for merchants to implement new payment capabilities, such as mobile payments or tokenization, without having to work with multiple payment partners. Access Worldpay provides a single …