The pandemic is changing payments, but it’s also reworking payments strategies. Here’s how the industry will have to react in the next few years. Covid-19 has dramatically transformed daily life in many ways all too familiar by this point. While we know that the pandemic will end, the timing is …

The pandemic has sparked a huge lift in online gift card sales as consumers make shopping for the plastic part of their e-commerce routine. The number of cards purchased online soared 57% in the first six months of this year compared to the first half of 2019. Some 52% of …

Cyber criminals took no time off in the first six months of 2019 as human-initiated attacks against online sites grew by 13% from the same period a year ago, finds the LexisNexis Risk Solutions Cybercrime Report released Tuesday. Bots, too, evolved to target new account creations. Bot attacks targeting new …

In a time when criminal access to consumer data has never been more common, merchants continue to experience pervasive and persistent fraud attempts. That’s the key takeaway from the 2019 sixth annual Fraud Attack Index from Forter Inc. released Thursday. How bad is the problem? Fraud grew in 2018 in …

• KeyBank announced it is supporting the Masterpass digital wallet from MasterCard Inc., which recently revamped Masterpass to stress in-store payments. • Wargaming, an online-games producer, has deployed the ReD Shield anti-fraud system from ACI Worldwide throughout Europe and now plans to deploy it globally. • WesBanco Bank Inc. will instantly issue …

Online-payments provider Skrill Group has a new owner. United Kingdom-based Optimal Payments Plc is buying London-based Skrill for 1.1 billion euros (U.S. $1.2 billion), Optimal announced Monday. Both companies provide digital-wallet services, with Skrill specializing in wallets for online-gambling users, e-commerce and money transfers. Skrill also offers a payment gateway and …

More evidence emerged in recent days to document the surging rise of mobile payments worldwide. For the first time, mobile transactions account for more than 25% of all global online traffic on the Adyen platform, the company said while releasing its quarterly Mobile Payments Index last week with statistics on the …

The Bitcoin virtual currency continued its march toward the payments mainstream with the recent announcement by online game developer Zynga Inc. that it would test Bitcoin acceptance with some of its popular games. n “In response to Bitcoin’s rise in popularity around the world, Zynga, with help from BitPay, is …

Now that New Jersey has become the third state to legalize online gambling, the market for the first time in years has begun to offer possibilities to acquirers as a promising new source of transaction volume. But questions remain about how and how soon the new state laws will be …

  Jim Daly   The odds may be growing that Internet poker and possibly other forms of online gambling will become legal. That would mean new transaction and revenue opportunities for payment processors.   Just say the words “online gambling” to payments-industry executives, and most run for cover. Next to …