E-Commerce

American Express Co. early Friday indicated growth rates for total network volumes, while still negative, have rebounded to first-quarter 2020 levels as economies re-open, anti-Covid vaccinations progress in major markets, and consumer travel recovers. “Our overall core business performance was slightly better than our expectations,” said AmEx chief executive Stephen …

Uplift Inc., a buy now, pay later provider specializing in travel, said consumers can now buy tickets on Southwest Airlines Co. flights and pay in installments.Some 79% of gift card buyers expect to increase spending on gifts when pandemic restrictions are relaxed or lifted, according to a survey of 1,056 …

Square Inc. announced Thursday the addition of three inventory-management features to its cloud-based retail-management app, Square for Retail. Merchants can use the new features to build an inventory library, track inventory by warehouse or store, transfer stock as needed, and reorder inventory with one click. The new features arrive as …

Discover Financial Services reported $1.6 billion in net income in the 2021 first quarter, a reversal of a $61 million loss in the same quarter in 2020. Discover said its payment services volume was $75.9 billion, a 19% increase year-over-year. Dollar volume on its Pulse debit network increased 23% year-over-year, driven …

The buy now, pay later trend has eased online purchases for consumers over the past year, but at the other end of those transactions is the flow of returns after buyers get their merchandise. Now Affirm Holdings Inc., a leading player in the fast-growing BNPL arena has attacked the issue with …

French processor Worldline S.A. reported its first-quarter merchant-services revenue dropped 8.7% year-over-year to 517 million euros ($621 million), while its terminals and software unit saw a 16.5% decline to 266 million euros ($320 million). Worldline acquired terminal maker Ingenico Group S.A. in October.FIS Inc. said it has won a domestic acquiring license for its Worldpay …

North America has emerged as the largest sales-generating region for buy now, pay later provider Afterpay Ltd. In the Australia-based company’s latest financial results, North America sales accounted for A$2.6 billion (US$2 billion) in the third quarter ended March 30. Only Australia and New Zealand approach that volume. Overall, Afterpay said …

Some 83% of consumers said they had used a QR code in the past year to make a payment or complete a financial transaction, with 54% of those persons saying they had used a QR code for those purposes for the first time in only the past three months. Still, just 39% …

Mastercard Inc. said it will acquire Ekata, a digital identity services company, for $850 million. Ekata helps identify good customers and businesses and bad actors in real time, it said. Ekata, formerly the business-to-business unit of Whitepages Pro, spun off in 2019 and adopted the new name. The deal is expected …

More evidence emerges of how consumer spending has changed in the past year. Consumers are using their debit cards more for transactions at hotels and motels within the travel sector, according to the PSCU Payments Index for April. Released Thursday, the index shows that debit card use accounted for 35% …