Competitive Strategies

A trade group representing card networks and issuers is taking aim at restaurant surcharges and price increases by large grocers as part of its efforts to defeat the Credit Card Competition Act. The Electronic Payments Coalition’s first salvo in its new campaign against the CCCA was fired last week. In …

Restaurants are roaring again, and now the companies that enable digital payments for them are setting their sites on the biggest chains. Two major players, Toast Inc. and Qu POS Inc., separately announced early Thursday initiatives aimed at bolstering their positions with regional and national restaurateurs. The moves come as …

Consumer demand for buy now, pay later loans may be high, but consumers are still at risk of overspending when using BNPL to finance a purchase or missing a payment. A survey released Thursday by Bankrate LLC reveals that overspending and missing a payment are two of the most common …

PAX Technology Inc., a provider of point-of-sale payments technology, released its IM15 device, aimed at unattended, heavy-traffic POS environments. Separately, the company also unveiled its E700Mini SmartPOS POS device. Payments provider Trustly said it is working with games company Light & Wonder to offer RapidPlay to the casino industry. The feature enables immediate cashless …

PayIt, a government-services platform and embedded-payments provider, has expanded its relationship with the Ohio Division of Wildlife to provide a digital-licensing system for hunters and fishermen. The deal is expected to offer a better process for online purchases and provide the agency’s staff with insights and tools to improve user …

Rising costs aren’t just happening in grocery stores. They have caught up to fraud-recovery costs when consumers work to untangle the mess caused by identity theft and scams. The average out-of-pocket expense for a consumer in that situation ballooned 70% from $119 in 2022 to $202 in 2023, according to …

The generative AI revolution received a significant boost from Discover Financial Services with the card network’s announcement early Tuesday it is deploying the artificial-intelligence technology within the Google Cloud platform in Discover’s call center. With the deployment, Discover’s nearly 10,000 customer-service agents will have access to intelligent document summarization through …

Despite a severe drop-off in check use, 61% of consumers continue to write paper checks and continue to face the threat of check fraud, says Abrigo, a financial-crime prevention and risk-management services provider. Released Tuesday, Abrigo’s survey of 1,059 U.S. consumers also found that 45% of respondents reported being a …

Mastercard Inc. announced an organizational realignment that centers on core payments, commercial and new payment flows, and services. Jorn Lambert will lead core payments as chief product officer. Raj Seshadri will head commercial and new payment flows as chief commercial payments officer. Craig Vosburg becomes the chief services officer in charge …

Merchants and credit and debit card issuers have controlled the bulk of the narrative, pro and con, about the proposed Credit Card Competition Act since the legislation was reintroduced last year. But now a recent poll from Independent Community Bankers of America says that most consumers feel they would not …