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April, 2026

• 15 April

  76% of U.S. Companies Were Subjected to Fraud in 2025

  

  It’s a sobering condition of today’s payments industry that fraud is a persistent, pervasive, and unwelcome counterpart to legitimate transaction activity. Testifying to that is that 76% of U.S. organizations experienced attempted or actual fraud in 2025, says the Association for Financial Professionals’ 2026 edition of its Payments Fraud and …
• 8 April

  Synthetic Identities And Malicious Bots Boost Fraud Attacks, LexisNexis Says

  

  Synthetic-identity fraud was the fastest growing type of fraud in 2025, accounting for 11% of total fraud globally, an eight-fold increase from 2024, says LexisNexis Risk Solutions’ annual cybercrime report. The explosion in synthetic identity fraud—which occurs when a criminal blends pieces of information belonging to multiple consumers to craft …

March, 2026

• 24 March

  How Adding Send for Instant Payments Spawned Good Surprises for BofA

  

  Bank-focused instant payments have been around since 2017, when The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC launched its RTP network, and gained more attention with the 2023 debut of FedNow from the Federal Reserve. While thousands of banks and credit unions have signed up to receive real-time payments from these services, …
• 16 March

  Shift4 Adds AI Ordering to its SkyTab POS System

  

  Maple AI Inc., a provider of artificial intelligence-based phone-ordering systems for restaurants, has partnered with Shift4 Payments Inc. to integrate its AI-based phone system into Shift4’s SkyTab POS technology. The inclusion of Maple’s AI ordering system in the SkyTab platform is expected to significantly reduce the number of phone orders …
• 4 March

  Crypto Bank Kraken Financial Is the First Digital Bank to Receive a Federal Reserve Master Account

  

  Kraken Financial, a Wyoming-based special-purpose depository institution operated by Payward Inc., has become the first digital bank to get a Federal Reserve master account. With the account, Kraken will be able to settle transactions directly on core payment rails in the United States, such as Fedwire, the Federal Reserve’s real-time …

February, 2026

• 6 February

  Embedded Payments Shift From Add-On Status to Basic Infrastructure

  

  Embedded payments have moved decisively beyond their early role as a bolt-on feature for software platforms and are now foundational to how merchants operate, according to panelists who spoke Thursday at the Northeast Acquirers Association conference in Boston. Once viewed as optional, embedded payments are increasingly expected to function as …

December, 2025

• 30 December

  Stablecoin Giant Circle Launches Arc for Cross-Border Flows

  

  [Aug. 12] Stablecoin giant Circle Internet Group Inc. early Tuesday unveiled Arc, a new payments platform aimed at major money flows, including foreign exchange. The new service, part of the existing Circle Payments Network, will speed up foreign exchange while offering what the company calls “sub-second instant finality” in settlement, the …
• 15 December

  Merchant Groups Voice Their Objections to the Latest Visa-Mastercard Swipe Fee Settlement Offer

  

  Merchant groups late Friday filed written complaints regarding the latest settlement offer in their two-decades old lawsuit against Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. challenging card swipe fees. The settlement offer, which follows a rejected offer in 2024, was made in November. Merchant groups filing complaints were The National Association of …
• 9 December

  Swipe Fees Are a Drain on Consumers’ Wallets, a Merchant Group Says

  

  Fees paid by merchants to accept credit card and debit cards will dampen consumer spending power this holiday shopping season as sellers look for ways to offset the cost, says the Merchants Payment Coalition. Swipe fees are projected to cost merchants at least $19.9 billion this holiday shopping season, up …
• 5 December

  The FIDO Alliance Launches a Digital Credentials Initiative

  

  The FIDO Alliance has launched an initiative to accelerate the adoption of verifiable digital credentials and identity wallets. The initiative will be led by the Alliance’s Digital Credentials Working Group (DCWG), EMVCo, the International Standardization Organization, The OpenID Foundation, and the Worldwide Web Consortium are also partnering on the initiative …