Credit Cards

Abra, a financial-services company specializing in digital assets, and American Express Co. have announced they will offer a rewards credit card that will let users pay with U.S. dollars but earn rewards in cryptocurrency. The new card, expected to debut late this year, will feature benefits such as Amex Offers, …

Mastercard Inc. said it is working with seven companies to enable its branded payment cards to be used for making non-fungible token purchases. NFTs are digital goods.Sardine, a provider of anti-fraud and compliance technology to fintechs, said it will work with cryptocurrency-technology provider Zero Hash to enable instant settlement on the …

When Apple Inc. on Monday announced Apple Pay Later, its buy now, pay later program, the computing giant added an unexpected twist. The new program will not rely for financing on Goldman Sachs, Apple’s long-time partner for Apple Pay. Rather, Apple is setting up its own unit, to be called …

The pandemic sent workers home to work, and online criminals have been quick to take advantage of that mass migration. Phishing attacks are now at a record high, with incidents in the first quarter breaching 1 million for the first time, according to a report released Tuesday by the Anti-Phishing …

EMVCo reported the number of EMV chip cards in circulation globally has grown by 1.1 billion over the past year to a total of 12 billion. Some 68% of all cards issued are now EMV-enabled and 90% of all card-present transactions use EMV chip technology, according to the global standards body.Paysafe …

MagicCube Inc. has chiefly aimed its tap-to-pay technology at small sellers to allow them to take card payments directly on an off-the-shelf mobile device. But on Monday the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company announced a version of its i-Accept platform for enterprise and big-box merchants.  To make i-Accept more attractive to …

Total credit and debit card dollar volume for Bank of America Corp. increased 9% in May year-over-year, with credit card volume up 16% and debit volume up 9%, the Bank of America Institute reported.A research report from Aite-Novarica finds what the report calls “excessively high rates” of identity theft, which the report says …

Despite a persistent shortage of microchips, global shipments of contactless cards hit the 2-billion mark for the first time in 2021, totaling 2.63 billion for the year, according to the Smart Payment Association, a Munich-based trade group.  Propelling the surge was the shipment of an additional 269 million contactless cards …

Square intrigued the payments industry a decade ago when it emerged to provide small sellers with a simple dongle they could attach to a mobile phone to accept card payments. Now Square says it’s moving to the next step. The company announced Thursday that later this year it will adopt …

The financial stresses brought on by inflation and other after-effects of the pandemic are starting to damage consumer satisfaction with payments apps, according to the results of a series of J.D. Power surveys, results of which were released early Thursday. Indeed, consumer satisfaction seems to be dropping even as app …