Podcasts
Startups
Why FinTechs Should Never Stop Climbing the ‘Profit Hill’
July 26, 2023
We’re a long way from the halcyon days of FinTech funding just a few years ago. Sezzle CEO Charlie Youakim and Vera Equity Co-founder Jon Pomeranz told PYMNTS Karen Webster that in the current environment marked by higher costs of capital and nascent firms that...
Credit Unions
Data and Better Loan Terms Help Credit Unions Win Millennial Business
July 17, 2023
As inflation remains stubbornly in place and credit gets ever more expensive, credit unions may have a secret weapon. Scott Young, managing VP of Emerging Services at PSCU, told PYMNTS that credit unions (CUs) stand to benefit from their lending operations, appealing to critical demographics,...
Startups
Index Ventures’ Fiorentino Says FinTechs Need ‘Thrive but Survive’ Mindset to Ease Path to Profitability
July 13, 2023
Following a years-long venture capital (VC) bull market that saw FinTech startups raise billions of dollars in funding, the challenging macroeconomic market has led to a sharpened focus on belt-tightening, with firms now under mounting pressure from investors to have a clearer path to profitability....
B2B Payments
Why Old Accounts Receivable Systems Cost Firms New Business
June 30, 2023
There’s a reason that business processes get the “consumer” treatment, not the other way around. And it isn’t just because the cart can’t drive the horse. As it relates to end-user purchasing experiences, “[those of] consumers are just dramatically more streamlined than the experience business...
Digital Banking
FinTechs’ Latest Profitability Challenge Is Finding Business Models Beyond Interchange
May 12, 2023
FinTechs are facing an existential crisis now that the age of easy access to capital is over. Investors — running the gamut from private venture capital firms to Wall Street activist investors and retail masses — are demanding to see profits. Sustainable black ink on...
Credit Unions
Credit Unions That Match Payments With Personalization Win Digital Wallet Share
March 01, 2023
Digital wallets are helping to create a faster, more expedited checkout for consumers. As financial institutions (FIs) and tech companies battle for market share and compete to bring their offerings to market, digital wallets also raise the table stakes around convenience for other payment methods....
Fintech Investments
Sezzle CEO: FinTech Path to Profitability Starts With Being Your Own Worst Critic
February 01, 2023
If Sezzle CEO Charlie Youakim had to write a book about the FinTech bubble that burst in 2022, he’d call it “Crazy Money.” That nugget came up in a conversation between Youakim and PYMNTS’ Karen Webster during the first discussion in the new series “FinTech...
Authentication
Raising the Bar for Passwordless, Frictionless Commerce
September 23, 2022
3DS 1, 3DS 2.1, 3DS 2.2. These acronyms should be crowding merchants’ minds as fines loom this fall for those who are not in compliance with the latest version of the 3D Secure protocol for authenticating eCommerce card transactions. But the state of readiness for...
Biometrics
Companies Lean on Biometrics, Machine Learning to Stay ‘One Step Ahead’ of Fraudsters
September 14, 2022
Wessel Matthee, information security compliance manager at Entersekt, told PYMNTS that through the past few years, there’s been a shift in the ways in which fraudsters try to steal personally identifiable information (PII). Phishing scams were the lure of choice before the pandemic, he said....
Cryptocurrency
Deciphering the Alphabet Soup of Crypto Regulation
September 14, 2022
If you granted one wish to virtually anyone doing business in the cryptocurrency world, and especially those involved in making payments and transferring money, they would likely ask for regulatory certainty. With the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Office of...
Healthcare
Savvy AI Deployments Help Healthcare Providers Climb Reimbursement Learning Curve
July 19, 2022
In the darkest hours of the pandemic when stimulus money was being provided, COVID-19 tests and vaccinations were free to patients, but someone had to pay the bills. In most cases, it was the health system that delivered the services, and getting reimbursed is proving...
Technology
Banks Take Fresh Look at FinTech Acquisitions to Improve Customer Efficiencies
July 15, 2022
Banks are accustomed to vying with FinTechs for customers, but increasingly, they’re partnering with them as a way to win new businesses and better serve their customers. Access to FinTechs’ technology and speed to market is driving that evolution. While banks may not have the...
Security & Fraud
Cybersecurity Firms Challenge ‘Professional Fraudsters’ With Customer-Friendly Protections
July 08, 2022
Is “fraudster” a title or job description of some kind? Perhaps it should be, because when shopping or sending money online, you’re never totally sure who’s on the other end. It could be someone you know — or it could be a bad actor who...
Fraud Prevention
Retailers Brace for Friendly Fraud’s New Seasonal Surges
June 16, 2022
To quote that old song: “To everything there is a season.” And payments, there are seasons for disputes. In an interview with Karen Webster, Verifi CEO Sara Craven said that the summer looms as fertile ground for disputed transactions as companies struggle to keep...
Authentication
Moving the Passwordless Future to the Here and Now
June 09, 2022
Even amid the great digital shift, some things haven’t changed. “Many people still love to hate passwords, and still have to wait for authentication requests that [often only] come through [via text] every now and then,” Gerhard Oosthuizen, chief technology officer at Entersekt, told PYMNTS...
Financial Inclusion
Startups Opt for Fixed-Price Payments to Bank MENA’s Unbanked
June 08, 2022
In the last couple of decades, consumers’ preferences for cross-border payments have been shifting, and more and more people are demanding convenience, speed, security, and above all, value for money, said Kaushik Sthankiya, chief commercial officer of subscription-based global payments provider Sokin. But compared to...
Commerce Connected
Trust, Choice and Convenience Are the New Glue of Customer Loyalty
May 17, 2022
Customer acquisition costs aren’t less costly, and consumers have a universe of choices at their fingertips now. It’s time for businesses and consumers to get to know each other better because the ripcord methods of the pandemic must be refined, or defections will scale. It’s...
Credit Unions
Credit Unions Use Digital to Head Off Competition From Big Banks, FinTechs
May 13, 2022
By and large, credit unions (CUs) are weathering the pandemic well, but nimble FinTechs and resourceful big banks want those loyal CU members as their own, making digital investment and service offerings a hot priority for CUs as the world moves toward an endemic economy....
Connected Economy
PayPal Combines COVID Learning With Digital Transformation to Pursue ‘Commerce 2.0’
May 09, 2022
If you remember Internet 1.0, it looked like a pinball machine and wasn’t very smart, making search results an adventure that often ended in disappointment. Selling is much the same, passing through its early “just slap up a website” phase and graduating to the experiences...
Digital-First Banking
Open Banking Platforms Strive to Balance Security and Ease of Use
April 15, 2022
Open banking is emerging across every market, but it’s doing so at different paces, for different reasons and in the face of different challenges. “I think the reason for the emergence of open banking is probably driving the challenges that are being faced in each...
Digital Payments
In Bid to Raise the Checkout Bar, PayPal Urges Industry to Boost Authorizations
March 30, 2022
Declines are deadly during this critical phase of eCommerce growth, which is placing authorization optimization and authorization rates at the center of payments planning in 2022. As businesses become understandably obsessed with customer journeys, a legitimate customer getting declined because one’s tech isn’t sophisticated enough...
Digital-First Banking
Banks’ Digital Offerings Walk a Fine Line Between Trust and Seamlessness
March 15, 2022
Roughly 70% of consumers have extremely or very high levels of trust in their financial institutions (FIs), which may lead one to wonder what’s going on with the other 30%. In an interview with PYMNTS, Mzukisi Rusi, vice president of solutions at Entersekt, said that...
Credit Unions
Digital Tools Unlock New Markets for Credit Unions
February 25, 2022
Credit unions (CUs) historically have been known for their service — the tellers who know you by name and the call-center staffers who will take the time to make sure your questions are answered. As they extend their services to other channels, it can be...
Security & Fraud
Banking Customers Demand More Security — But Not if it Hurts User Experience
February 17, 2022
When accessing their digital financial accounts, customers want to have a choice of channels and devices to use. They also want to have a great user experience (UX), whether via a desktop website, app or mobile browser. “That flexibility is really important, allowing choice for...
Buy Now Pay Later
Banks Use Data, Deep Pockets and Trust to Prep BNPL Entry
February 15, 2022
They’ve waited — and they’ve watched. Ava Kelly, chief product officer at i2c, told PYMNTS that banks, after observing digital upstarts, are now fully ready to embrace buy now, pay later (BNPL) initiatives while playing up their competitive strengths. The potential market for BNPL, she...
Authentication
Risk-Based Authentication Can Improve Customer Experience, Cement Loyalty
January 24, 2022
Fraud is always evolving, and financial institutions girding themselves against attacks often find themselves in the unenviable position of being, at most, one or two steps ahead of the bad actors trying to perpetrate it. Increasingly, authentication is a critical weapon in the fight, but...
Personnel
Responding to ‘Pandemic Fatigue,’ Companies Lead With Empathy
January 19, 2022
After two years of the pandemic — and the new way of living and working that came along with it, with no end in sight — more and more people are naturally responding to the prolonged anxiety and uncertainty with fatigue, exhaustion, lack of motivation,...
Credit Unions
Data Plus Trust Is the Credit Union’s Digital Roadmap
December 23, 2021
The pandemic has spotlighted a key urgency for financial institutions (FIs) of all types: investigating and investing in the connection between human and digital engagement while remaining focused on members’ financial wellness. CO-OP Financial Services Senior Vice President of Client Relationships Tiffany Doty told PYMNTS...
Digital Payments
How Trust, Choice, Ease and Fast Approvals Fight Foul-Ups at Checkout
December 14, 2021
Your checkout experience may appear to be going smoothly. You’ve found what you’re looking for, you’ve clicked “pay” or tapped your credit card at the point-of-sale terminal. Your bank, meanwhile, approves the transaction. Then — nothing. Something in the process breaks down, and your transaction fails....
Authentication
New User Authentication System Sets Stage for a Passwordless Future
November 30, 2021
With the longstanding 3D Secure (3DS) version 1 being readied for retirement in October 2022, financial institutions (FIs) and merchants are preparing for a streamlined authentication process more aligned with consumers’ expectations of the connected economy. It’s a timely move. During the pandemic and resulting...
Safety and Security
The Metaverse Will Need Its Own INTERPOL to Police Payments Crossing Between Virtual, Real Worlds
November 30, 2021
If the metaverse is a virtual world, will it need a virtual version of INTERPOL to police it for fraud and financial crimes? Like so many things about the nascent metaverse, it’s possible. The more we learn about metaverse plans from major players like Fortnite...
Credit Unions
Credit Unions Must Digitalize Products, Services and Support To Re-engage Existing Members
November 09, 2021
Coming out of the pandemic, consumers are looking for a lot of digital-first experiences. When it comes to financial services, many are moving to FinTechs and downloading new apps that offer innovative digital solutions that often save time and money. This embrace of FinTechs also...
SMBs
For SMBs, Build vs. Buy Microservices Debate Warrants a Look at the Tech Stack
October 18, 2021
The tech stack — that conglomeration of tech, codes, software and services that build websites or apps — can be a strategic advantage, not a cost center. Brandon Gell, CEO and co-founder of Clyde, said for smaller firms, in the inexorable bid to move online,...
Subscription Commerce
For Subscription Businesses, Fewer Failed Payments Means Better Customer Retention
October 15, 2021
Subscription businesses know that if a payment is failing, it’s bad for them and bad for the customer, though many may not realize just how bad it actually might be. Beyond the lost revenue from the failed payment, the business may also lose the customer and, in turn,...
Commerce Connected
Software Developers Vital to Creating, Scaling Connected Economy
October 12, 2021
A primary challenge of the connected economy is continuously building out and then enhancing the billions of connections powering popular omnichannel experiences that shoppers, merchants, payments providers and technology partners all now have a stake in. In a PYMNTS interview, PayPal Senior Director of Developer...
Credit Unions
Going Digital, But Staying Personal, Means Customer Considerations Must Come First
October 08, 2021
If you ask most credit unions to list their biggest competitive advantage that other financial players don’t have, you’d likely hear of their ability to meet members’ needs or to stay laser-focused on the people they serve. Inversely, if you asked about where they felt...
Buy Now Pay Later
BNPL Offers Merchants New Insights Into Consumer Buying Behavior
September 30, 2021
With an estimated 29 million U.S. consumers having used buy now, pay later (BNPL) to complete their purchases in the last 12 months, merchants and brands are increasingly looking at the payments option as a way to connect with consumers in a manner they couldn’t...
Security & Fraud
With 80% of Data Breaches Involving Passwords, Their Retirement Cannot Happen Soon Enough
September 28, 2021
Passwords are, in a word, broken. We all know this — and yet we continue to use them almost reflexively. “Passwords provide a poor user experience in part because you need to remember all of them, and they’re an insecure form of authentication,” Entersekt Digital...
Accounts Receivable
Digitizing the Cash Application Process Reduces Supplier DSOs by 30%, Improves Cash Flow
September 17, 2021
The past year and a half has seen no shortage of technological transformations – and, increasingly, companies have set out to “make over” their accounts receivable (AR) operations through digitization. As Tim Stahl, senior vice president at Versapay, told PYMNTS, digitizing the cash application process,...
eCommerce
‘Click to Pay’ + Consumer Ed = Transformed Online Shopping
September 15, 2021
Amid the great digital shift, as more consumers embrace digital wallets and cards and shop at an ever-widening array of merchants, the transformation of online guest checkout options, including Click to Pay, are poised to reach critical mass. But it’ll take some education of key...
Authentication
Why Merchants’ Biggest Fraud Problem Isn’t The Payments Consumers Make
September 15, 2021
It’s becoming ever more critical for fraud management and mitigation to be part of emerging technologies such as virtual cards, digital issuing, and buy now, pay later (BNPL) offerings. And it’s not all about technology — there’s room for humans in the fraud prevention efforts...
Commerce Connected
PayPal’s Jim Magats: SMBs Must Meet Customers Across Connected Economy’s ‘Four Domains’
September 13, 2021
In the connected economy, consumers want to simplify how they access the many things that were once resident in individual apps on their phones. The far-flung data that is created as consumers research, browse and transact — in essence the information that follows them around...
Digital Identity
Consent-Based Social Security Number Verification Helps to Reduce Synthetic IDs
September 10, 2021
With the headlines swirling about data breaches and the sensitive information that is being sold on the dark web, it may seem like the most basic level of identification — the Social Security number — is simply a liability, something the fraudsters can find at...
Digital-First Banking
The Secret Sauce for FIs to Retain Customers Is to Be Invisible, Fast and (Nearly)...
September 02, 2021
“The notion of having a single financial relationship is really a thing of the past,” said Todd Clark, president and CEO of CO-OP Financial Services, a 40-year-old, nationwide credit union service organization (CUSO). The key for financial institutions (FIs) is to position themselves as the...
Buy Now Pay Later
For SMBs, Buy Now, Pay Later Is Much More Than Just A Payment Method
August 27, 2021
As the world begins to reopen and consumer spending habits shift back offline, the buy now, pay later (BNPL) train has kept chugging along as more and more businesses hop on board. Though much of the buzz around BNPL relates to the consumer benefits derived...
Buy Now Pay Later
Zip CEO Says BNPL Success Depends On Placing Merchants First
August 25, 2021
Talk to anyone in financial circles about the future of payments and it likely includes buy now, pay later (BNPL). For months, a steady stream of announcements from both retailers and payments companies have filled the press on almost a daily basis, culminating in the...
B2B Payments
A Good Payments Partnership Goes A Long Way In Easing The Adoption Of New B2B...
August 24, 2021
B2B payments are in the midst of a dramatic shift — and while the outcomes are yielding greater efficiency, security and productivity, the process of change can be a painful one. The good news is that more organizations are acknowledging the value in enduring short-term...
Credit Unions
Credit Unions Need Digital Innovation To Attract And Retain ‘The Next Generation’
August 23, 2021
Numbers, as they say, tell a story. At first glance, it may seem that upstart challenger banks are making inroads against traditional financial players, especially against credit unions (CUs). After all, although 4.2 million individuals joined CUs last year, that tally was eclipsed by the...
Authentication
Forget About Single-Click Convenience And Collaborate On Authentication
August 06, 2021
If you accept the fact that digital fraudsters are never going to just go away, Trulioo Senior Vice President of Identity Solutions Garient Evans told PYMNTS, the case for a collaborative, personal and professional response starts to make a lot more sense. Add in the...
Digital-First Banking
FI Payments Modernization Requires Pushing The New While Supporting The Old
August 06, 2021
The modernization journey that banks and financial institutions (FIs) are on today always comes back to the same place: customer need. CheckAlt Director of Customer Experience Margie Huntley told PYMNTS it is only by understanding that concept that the FIs and businesses CheckAlt works with...