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 »Waitr Plans Cova Acquisition and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 12/17/21
Food-ordering and delivery provider Waitr Holdings Inc. said it has entered into a non-binding letter of intent to acquire Retail Innovation Labs Inc., known as Cova, a provider of point-of-sale software for cannabis dispensaries. The deal calls for a price of $90 million in cash and stock.Agilysys Inc., a provider of payments …
Read More »UBS Arena Is the Latest Professional Sports Stadium to Go Cashless
The move toward cashless sports stadiums continues to accelerate. UBS Arena, home of the National Hockey League’s New York Islanders, has contracted with Fiserv Inc. to install Clover point-of-sale hardware and Bypass point-of-sale software to enable digital and contactless payment options throughout the venue. UBS Arena will deploy more than …
Read More »U.S. Senators Press CFPB on BNPL Oversight and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 12/16/21
Six U.S. Senators sent a letter to Rohit Chopra, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, asking the agency to initiate a review of buy now, pay later products with a view toward introducing consumer protections. All six Senators are Democratic members of the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.Online gaming operator PointsBet has …
Read More »COMMENTARY: The Time Has Come for All Merchants to Adopt Surcharging And Discounting
There are few subjects that raise the ire of merchants more than the runaway costs of card acceptance. For years, many have grumbled about the costs but felt powerless to do anything about them. Now, as the result of a chain of court victories at the state and federal level, …
Read More »16% Have Made a Crypto Payment and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 12/15/21
New research from Fiserv Inc. found that 16% of U.S. consumers have used cryptocurrency at least once to pay for goods and services. The survey of 2,200 U.S. adults also revealed that 25% of crypto users cited lack of merchant acceptance as the primary limitation to increasing the use of crypto as …
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 »Celero Acquires Everest and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 12/14/21
Celero Commerce said it acquired Everest Payment Solutions. Terms were not disclosed. With Everest, Celero will serve more than 45,000 merchants that process more than $18 billion in annual card volume.Digital ordering and payments technology, which gained prominence with the pandemic, has made customers more impatient, with 64% indicating they won’t …
Read More »Equifax’s New Vetting Service and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 12/13/21
The giant credit bureau Equifax Inc. launched Onboard Connect, a service that the company says offers near real-time business verification, fraud checks, and other services to support business-to-business transactions.Vivid Seats Inc., a provider of technology that links ticket buyers and sellers, said it has closed on its acquisition of Betcha Sports Inc., …
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 …
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