Monday , December 15, 2025

Competitive Strategies

Block Notes 10% BFCM Uptick and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 12/2/25

Black Friday through Cyber Monday shopping generated a 10% rise year-over-year for Block Inc.’s Square, Cash App, and Afterpay payments properties, to 124 million transactions, the company reported. Payments processor Nuvei Corp. announced it is expanding a partnership with Microsoft Corp. to enable its core payment processing APIs to run on Microsoft Axure and use Azure AI to …

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Eye on Acquiring: Kurv Launches a Merchant App; Lufthansa Adds Klarna as a Payment Option

Merchants processing with Kurv, which was known as Electronic Merchant Systems until November, have a new option and a new app. In related news, the airline Lufthansa Group is adding Klarna AB’s buy now, pay later options via a Klarna and Adyen NV integration. Cleveland-based Kurv debuted a merchant app …

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Klarna Black Friday Volume up 45% and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 12/1/25

Klarna AB said its U.S. processing volume across all product categories was up a record 45% for November through Black Friday. Absolute figures were not immediately available. Black Friday sales data from Accertify Inc. indicate consumers spent $115.46 per transaction on average, down 17% from last year, while initiating 52.5 million transactions, up …

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Retailer Newegg Is Among the First to Enable PayPal Agentic Commerce

Having just Tuesday activated PayPal acceptance within the Perplexity.AI artificial-intelligence engine, electronics retailer Newegg is one of the first sellers to integrate PayPal Holdings Inc.’s agentic-commerce services. This means consumers can discover and purchase Newegg products directly inside Perplexity and potentially other AI-shopping environments. A form of e-commerce, agentic commerce …

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The ‘Pressing Concern’ of Fraud and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 11/26/25

Fraud and scams have grown into a “pressing concern” for users of digital payments in the Caribbean and Latin America, according to a regional survey report released by Mastercard Inc. The research effort queried 3,577 adults in 12 countries in October. Mastercard has launched Mastercard Access Pass, aimed at allowing card issuers to …

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Worldpay Launches a Protocol for Creating AI Agents And Connecting Them to Its Platform

Worldpay LLC has launched an open-source standard to help developers create artificial intelligence-based commerce agents and connect AI apps to external systems. The standard, known as the Model Context Protocol, enables such AI apps as ChatGPT to connect to databases, search engines, and workflows, or specialized prompts, to access information …

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U.S. Payments Modernization Is Taking a Toll on Cash

The combined effect of five payments trends is chipping away at cash reliance, finds a new report from Deloitte. Increasing adoption of stablecoin payments, especially for cross-border payments, increased speed of transactions, using data standards to one’s advantage, agentic artificial-intelligence commerce, and employing AI to counter fraud are all shaping …

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Bluwhale’s Stablecoin Agent and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 11/24/25

Bluwhale AI Inc. has launched its AI Stablecoin Agent, aimed at helping individuals automate their management of dollar-denominated digital-currency assets. American Express Co. announced it is working with the International Downtown Association to award more than $1.4 million in grants to 97 small and independently owned restaurants in 14 cities outside the …

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FICO Teams With Plaid to Include Cash Flow Data in Credit Scoring

FICO (Fair Isaac Corp.) has partnered with open-banking platform Plaid Inc. to develop the UltraFICO score, a credit score that includes real-time cash-flow data from Plaid. The new scoring model is intended to give lenders a more comprehensive view of a consumer’s credit readiness. The UltraFICO score will weigh a …

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Digital Transactions