Predictions that gift cards would be a popular choice this holiday shopping season may bear out. At least one gift card provider, Tillo Inc., finds that across Black Friday to Cyber Monday, Nov. 28-Dec.1, its total sales were up 41% over the similar period in 2024. Tillo, based in the …
Read More »Fiserv Adopts Agentic Commerce Protocols From Visa and Mastercard
Fiserv Inc. looked to position itself at the forefront of agentic commerce early Monday with the adoption of protocols from Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. Fiserv will deploy Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol across its payments system to authenticate, retrieve, accept, and process agentic transactions. Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol identifies trusted …
Read More »How Processors Are Turning to Stablecoins for Internal and Seller Funding
The speed and apparent lower cost of stablecoins—coupled with the digital currency’s rising prominence as a payments method—has captured the imagination of payments companies. Now some are leveraging the coins for both internal and merchant funding. Shift4 Payments Inc. said early Monday it has launched a facility for stablecoin settlement …
Read More »Fed Payment Account Comment Opens and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 12/22/25
The Federal Reserve opened a 45-day public comment period on a proposal that would enable eligible financial institutions to clear and settle payments within the Fed’s payment services. Dubbed payment account, this account would be distinct from a master account, the Fed said, which is what financial institutions currently must use for …
Read More »Cannabis Payments Providers Applaud Reclassification of the Drug. Are Card Transactions Next?
POSaBIT Systems Corp., a payments processor specializing in cannabis merchants, and Dutchie, a software provider to more than over 6,500 cannabis businesses, late Thursday lauded the Trump administration’s decision to reclassify cannabis to a Schedule III drug as a move that could finally open the door for cannabis merchants to …
Read More »Payroc Doubles Down on SMBs, Embedded Finance, and Larger Merchants
Less than 90 days into closing its acquisition of BlueSnap Inc., Payroc WorldAccess LLC is pushing ahead with its dual strategy of courting small and mid-size businesses that may need a point-of-sale terminal and prospecting larger merchants with integrated payment needs. It sees the acquisition not as an end goal, …
Read More »Visa Predicts Agentic Commerce Will Be Mainstream in 2026; BigCommerce Adds Stripe’s Agentic Commerce Suite
Visa Inc. announced early Thursday hundreds of artificial intelligence-based and agent-initiated transactions have been completed in collaboration with partners, a milestone the card network says is a signal that agentic commerce is poised to become mainstream in 2026. By the start of the next year’s holiday shopping season, Visa predicts …
Read More »Eye on POS: Talus Adopts Ingenico SoftPOS Tech; Oracle Payments Expands to Canada
Count Talus among the latest payments companies to adopt softPOS technology, which enables merchants to accept contactless payments with no special hardware. In related news, Oracle Corp. said its Oracle Payments service is now available in Canada and issued several updates to the service. Dallas-based Talus says its incorporation of …
Read More »Isaacman Finally Gets NASA OK and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 12/18/25
Former Shift4 Payments Inc. chief executive Jared Isaacman was approved by a U.S. Senate vote of 67-30 to take over as administrator at NASA, the top position at the U.S. space agency. President Trump renominated Isaacman for the job in November after quashing his original nomination in May. Payments platform PSQ Holdings Inc. said …
Read More »Akamai and Visa Team on Agentic Commerce Controls
With at least one forecast, from Morgan Stanley, predicting agentic commerce could capture from 10% to 20% of U.S. e-commerce spending by 2030, payments companies are quickly prepping. The latest is the pairing of Visa Inc. and Akamai Technologies Inc., a cybersecurity and cloud-computing company. The Visa and Akamai collaboration …
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