Imagine waving a wand and making something appear in your hands. While it’s not magic, the Cash App Wand could make that happen. Announced Thursday, Cash App Wand is the first in a series of Cash App Tags, which are NFC-enabled, physical payment accessories that let consumers pay without having …
June, 2026
May, 2026
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15 May
How Stablecoins Are Crashing the Agentic Commerce Party
It was probably only a matter of time before agentic commerce embraced cryptocurrency. Technology platform Worldwide Stablecoin Payment Network early Friday announced W Agent, which the Singapore-based company calls a “new AI Agent skill.” That means the agents can find merchants, enter orders, and transact in stablecoins “end-to-end,” as the …
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4 May
Eye on POS: Preferred Hotels Prefer Toast; NCR Voyix Expands at Stater Bros. Markets
Restaurant payments and management-software provider Toast Inc. announced Monday that it is now an endorsed vendor for luxury hotel group Preferred Hotels and Resorts, and NCR Voyix Corp. reported an expansion of its existing relationship with Southern California grocery chain Stater Bros. Markets. Toast said it is now a member …
April, 2026
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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 …
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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
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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, …
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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 …
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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
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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
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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 …

