PaymentsJournal

The most familiar example of surcharging might be the cash-or-credit pricing at gas stations, but more businesses are following that lead. While it’s becoming common for customers to pay for the right to use a credit card at restaurants and retailers, credit card surcharging hasn’t been a common practice in the healthcare industry.  In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Ali Badawy , Director o...

Financial institutions are exploring new ways to attract younger savers, and their payment habits are evolving in turn. Credit cards have now edged out debit cards as the preferred choice, even among younger generations. Additionally, digital wallets and peer-to-peer methods like Venmo and PayPal are gaining significant traction in this demographic.   Velera’s Eye on Payments study, a compreh...

Over the past five years, the U.S. has experienced an average of $18 billion annually in natural disaster-related damages. Millions of individuals are impacted by natural disasters each year, facing financial challenges such as damage to homes, the need for temporary shelter, and the replacement of personal belongings and food. With delays in funds distribution due to legacy payout methods and out...

The payments industry has seen such rapid growth and dramatic technological advancements in recent years that conferences have become a crucial way to stay connected to the pulse of the space. There are few bigger industry events than Nacha’s Smarter Faster Payments 2025, which will kick off in New Orleans next spring. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Peter Tapling , Managing Director of PTap...

Money 20/20, one of the largest financial conferences in the world, has become a must-attend for payments, fintech, and banking professionals. This year, hot topics included instant payments, cross-border payments, and the integration of AI into fintech. However, the acceleration of payments innovations has also caused a decided shift in the show’s tone. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Oscar...

Organizations seeking more flexibility and sophistication in devising transaction fee and commission structures are increasingly turning to rules-based fees engines.  Billing systems are designed to handle invoicing and collect payments, but they are limited in their ability to help companies create new fees and commissions. Rules-based fees engines allow payment processors to stay competitiv...

As the world hurtles headlong toward real-time payments, speed and efficiency have often been prioritized over security. However, with faster payments comes faster fraud, and just as organizations deploy technology to streamline their systems, criminals are deploying complex schemes on a global scale. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Dal Sahota , Director of Trusted Payments at LSEG Risk Intel...

Prepaid cards are in the midst of a dramatic transformation. With the incorporation of digital wallets, contactless payments, and artificial intelligence, prepaid cards have quickly become one of the most popular payment tools. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Mani Farhang , Vice President of Product at Fiserv Gift Solutions, and Jordan Hirschfield , Director of Prepaid at Javelin Strategy &#3...

As fraudsters become more innovative in their schemes, Nacha is rolling out new rules to address emerging fraud risks, particularly scams involving business email compromise, vendor impersonation, and the increasing use of money mules. These key changes, centered around the ACH rules, began rolling out in October and will continue through 2026. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Glenn Fratangelo...

 The holiday season is here, bringing with it a host of celebrations. From office parties to family gatherings, shoppers are navigating an evolving landscape of gift-giving traditions. In our latest podcast episode, we dive into how consumer trends, new technologies, and the timeless appeal of gift cards are shaping the way people are gifting this season. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast,...

Artificial intelligence is fueling a major transformation in the financial fraud landscape. AI has democratized criminal sophistication and fraud at a very low cost of conducting business, generating more malignant actors that financial institutions have to fight against. What can these institutions do to mitigate increasingly sophisticated frauds and scams? In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Ka...

Instant payments have been a global phenomenon, but the momentum for real-time payments  is building in the U.S. There is a growing expectation among both businesses and consumers that when they send funds, the recipient should be able to access them instantly. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Justin Jackson , SVP, Head of Enterprise Payments, Fiserv, and Robert Clayton , Vice President o...

In 2021, the Government of Canada passed the Retail Payments Activities Act, which required the Bank of Canada, the nation’s central bank, to begin overseeing payment service providers (PSPs). Under the legislation, Canadian PSPs—along with any entities involved in the electronic transfer or storage of funds—must register between November 1 and 15. In preparation of these new regulations, Ron Morr...

Artificial intelligence has had a dramatic effect across industries in a short time. Accounting is no exception, but there has been speculation of whether AI would replace those working in the profession. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Ted Callahan , Accountant Leader at Intuit, and Albert Bodine , Director of Commercial Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, explored key findings from...

When the topic is prepaid cards, the store-branded or general-purpose gift cards at grocery stores and retailers might come to mind. However, a substantial number of businesses and organizations continually use prepaid cards for a range of cases, including employee incentives and customer rebates. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Sheryl Shewman , Vice President of Business Development at U.S....

As of March 10, 2025, ISO 20022 will become the messaging standard for financial services in the United States. Yet adoption continues to be slow among large and small banks, with only about a quarter of American banks already using the new protocol. As some have put it, it’s like waiting until the last minute to do your Christmas shopping. Are financial institutions ready for this conversion? In...

Banks allocate significant resources to fighting fraud, both in prevention and in maintaining reserves for potential losses. No matter how good the performance is, fraud losses remain a burden on their balance sheets. Instnt , under the leadership of CEO and founder Sunil Madhu , has been at the forefront of developing innovative ways to combat bank fraud. Madhu recently sat down with Tracy Kitten...

The ATM industry has undergone a dynamic shift that has taken automated teller machines far beyond cash dispensation. As the number of bank branches has declined, both banks and consumers expect ATMs to provide a wide array of services that were once only offered at a teller’s counter. In response to the increased demand for ATM services, financial services company NCR recently split into two sepa...

With no relief from inflation in sight, consumers are bracing for an expensive holiday shopping season, especially with only 27 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. To stretch their budgets, consumers will leverage every available method, and merchants’ loyalty programs can save customers money while strengthening brand relationships. However, another key pillar of a merchant’s succe...

Access to emergency funds provides peace of mind, especially when many people find themselves scrambling to cover expenses.   Given the needs of younger consumers, liquidity and cash flow issues are becoming increasingly important for financial institutions to address.   Changing regulations offer financial institutions an opportunity to rethink how they are meeting these customer n...

The upcoming conversion to ISO 20022 presents both challenges and opportunities for banks. It allows them to drive potential efficiencies by redesigning operational processes around Swift messaging. However, there is also the challenge of data ingestion; banks will need to ensure every tech platform in their stack, particularly reconciliation and reporting tools, can effectively handle ISO 20022 m...

Open banking has come to encompass so much that it can be hard to define. At its heart, open banking is about opening consumer financial data—once the sole domain of banks—to third-party service providers that manage the data using APIs. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Vladimir Jovanovic , VP of Innovation at Velera, and James Wester, Co-Head of Payments at Javelin Strategy & Researc...

After companies have spent years struggling to build their own payments systems, the era of Payments 3.0 has arrived. This new domain is driven by technological innovators who take a product-centric approach to creating holistic payment systems from the ground up.  In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Danny Shader , CEO of PayNearMe, spoke with Christopher Miller , Lead Analyst of Emerging Payment...

The role of the Chief Financial Officer has evolved significantly in recent years, with finance offices increasingly tasked with driving business growth. As technology requirements and banking relationships grow more complex, CFOs often find it challenging to maintain the cash visibility necessary to optimize working capital and make informed strategic decisions. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcas...

The ACH Network is set to surpass 33 billion payments by the end of the year, marking a significant milestone. Consumer Internet-initiated payments are set to surpass 10 billion, a remarkable achievement considering the payment method was created just 20 years ago. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Michael Herd , Executive Vice President of ACH Network Administration at Nacha, and Elisa Tavilla...