Issuing/Originating

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 …

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 …

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% …

After the current U.S. Congress was sworn in, a predictable chorus of merchants, lobbyists, and lawmakers demanded new interchange price caps and other government mandates to decrease credit card interchange fees for merchants. The tired attacks on credit cards are an easy narrative that focuses almost exclusively on the cost …

Faster-payment volume soared 88% on the nation’s automated clearing house network in the year’s first quarter compared to the same period in 2020, Nacha reported Thursday. Transactions processed the same day they were initiated totaled 141.1 million, compared to 75 million in last year’s March quarter, the last period before …

Cardlytics Inc., a specialist in deriving marketing data from payments flows, has agreed to acquire customer-data platform Bridg Inc. for $350 million.Pay Theory, a specialist in payments technology for school districts, is integrating its services with Abre.io, a provider of administration platforms for elementary and high schools.Airvet, a provider of …