Competitive Strategies

As financial institutions help their customers counter fraud, Feedzai is releasing a tool to help FIs better identify potential scams. Dubbed ScamAlert, the service, which incorporates an artificial-intelligence utility, can help identify tactics criminals use to exploit consumers. Many consumers may initially fall for a scam through a phishing email; …

Account-to-account payments provider Dwolla Inc. has launched an integration to open-banking platform Plaid Inc. The integration is expected to enable Dwolla users to verify accounts and check account balances in real time through a single vendor and application programming interface. Dwolla announced its partnership with Plaid late last year. The …

As credit and debit cards—and their digital doppelgangers—continue to find favor among consumers, the use of cash over the past 10 years has slipped from 44% of in-store spend to 15% in 2024, finds the latest Worldpay Global Payments Report. Released Tuesday, the report, now in its 10th year, says …

Visa Inc. introduced its scam-disruption practice, aimed at identifying and preventing scams “as they emerge,” the company says. Just 26% of credit card holders are “satisfied” with their cards, while 24% are “dissatisfied” and 50% are “indifferent,” according to a survey of 8,000 cardholders age 18 to 45, plus 200 senior …

Buy now, pay later specialist Affirm Holdings Inc. continues to expand into fashion merchants through a partnership with online fashion-marketplace StockX. Apparel merchants are a fast-growing merchant category for Affirm. The BNPL provider has added 55 apparel sellers in the past six months, including StockX. In addition, transactions in its apparel and …

With e-commerce sales accounting for 16.4% of all U.S. retail sales in the fourth quarter, Wildfire Systems Inc. is hoping its new white-label shopping portal will enable more merchants to take advantage of the shopping channel. In related news, retailer Best Buy Canada will use PingPong as its first cross-border payment …

American Express Co. has acquired software developer Center. Terms of the deal, announced late Thursday, were not disclosed. The acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter. The deal will provide AmEx’s corporate and small-business cardholders with an integrated expense-management platform that delivers real-time visibility into all employee spending, …

Stripe Inc. has doubled its office space in Chicago, leasing more than 44,000 additional square feet on the fifth floor of a building in the city’s River North neighborhood and bringing its total space to about 89,000 square feet, according to Crain’s Chicago Business. Business-technology provider Globant announced it has developed systems for …

E-commerce fraud prevention specialist Riskified has launched Adaptive Checkout, an app created to drive higher conversion rates by reducing false positives. The app leverages artificial intelligence to analyze each transaction based on its risk profile and the shopper’s purchase history. For example, a merchant’s best customers can be sent straight …

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday voted 51-47 to scrub a regulation issued in November by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and aimed at mobile wallets and digital money transfers. The repeal legislation, which now moves to the House of Representatives, comes as major payment-app developers like Apple Inc., Block Inc., …