Industry News

VERIFONE hardware and merchant acquiring processing support capabilities are being integrated directly into the payment acceptance platform of payment service provider Unzer. The UnzerOne platform offers merchants the ability to accept all major European payment methods, deploy new devices, manage and track sales and receive payouts. The company’s customers in Germany, Austria, Denmark and Luxembourg are mostly small businesses.

MUCHBETTER is a digital wallet and prepaid Mastercard card provider with consumer and business customers in the UK, EEA, Canada, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. The company is expanding into Israel, leveraging the technology of its global partner Thredd, which handles account processing support and top-ups to fund physical and virtual prepaid cards. MuchBetter cards are widely used for iGaming.

SPREEDLY has made agentic commerce a live channel in its open payments platform. Merchants can process agent-initiated payments using their existing payment service providers while remaining the merchant of record. Routing logic is unchanged. Spreedly is not tied to any single AI platform. Merchants will be able to handle payments across multiple chat interfaces. Spreedly processes over $60 billion in gross merchandise volume annually for more than 400 customers.

INTUIT will make Anthropic’s Claude AI agent technology available to midsized merchants on the Intuit platform, which includes TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks and Mailchimp. Businesses will be able to build custom AI agents to support compliant workflows using the Claude Agent SDK. Intuit’s tax, finance, accounting and marketing expertise and tools will be available in Anthropic’s Cowork, Claude for Enterprise and Claude.ai products.

RISKIFIED, a provider of fraud fighting technology to top ecommerce companies and online brands, will expand its AI Agent Intelligence platform to protect merchants that deploy native conversational AI shopping assistants from fraud and abuse. A risk intelligence layer provides a complete history of the buyer across a global network of ecommerce brands. A merchant’s AI shopping agent can directly query Riskified’s Identity Graph to receive risk indicators. Merchants can apply business rules to manage the risk of order volume coming in from their native AI shopping agents.

NJIAPAY and CROSS SWITCH have formed a partnership to support card payment acceptance for merchants in South Africa. Cross Switch provides payment infrastructure that enables businesses to access local and international payment methods. NjiaPay offers aggregation, orchestration and routing services across Africa.

BILLTRUST, a provider of B2B accounts receivable workflow and payment software, has added Agentic Credit Lines to its Credit Review product. Agentic Credit Lines monitors 80 data points in real time and analyzes 12 months of payment history, utilization patterns, overdue balances, dispute trends and external credit ratings tied to Billtrust’s proprietary network of 13 million buyers. It delivers audit-ready credit limit recommendations with supporting rationale. Billtrust has been in business for 25 years.

HUNTINGTON BANK will use technology from Payabli to provide its business customers with embedded payment services through its online banking portal. Embedded finance products will enable customers to remain entirely within the bank’s ecosystem. Businesses can accept payments from cards, the ACH and digital wallets. Disbursements can be made through the ACH, vendor links and OCR-based payouts.

CITGO, which supplies a network of approximately 4,000 locally owned and independently operated branded retail fuel stations in the US, has launched Citgo PlusPay, an ACH-based payment method within its Club Citgo mobile app. Consumers link their bank accounts to make payments and receive loyalty rewards. Citgo PlusPay transactions are encrypted and deploy real-time authorization protocols.

BANCO SANTANDER has carried out the first live end-to-end payment executed by an AI agent within a regulated banking framework in Europe using Mastercard Agent Pay. AI agents initiate and execute payments on behalf of customers within predefined limits and permissions.

BHMI, a provider of back-office payment software, has enhanced its Concourse Financial Software Suite to include support for Interac, Canada’s national debit network. Concourse handles settlement, reconciliation, dispute management and reporting. The company helps issuers and acquirers comply with Interac’s debit card processing requirements.

HBX GROUP, a global B2B travel technology marketplace, will deploy Outpayce’s cloud native fintech platform to launch a payment program that travel agencies can use to pay hotels, airlines, travel aggregators and destination service providers. The platform combines virtual card issuing and financial services capabilities with travel features. Also available is an Outpayce B2B wallet and wallet portal. Outpayce is a unit of Amadeus.

SOCURE, a provider of an AI-native platform used by companies for identity verification and risk decisioning, has expanded it bank account verification capabilities to more than 30 countries outside of the US and Canada. The company combines account coverage with built-in fraud intelligence.

BANCO PLATA, which has issued three million Mastercard credit cards in Mexico exclusively through a mobile app, has received final approval from the country’s National Banking and Securities Commission to operate as a full-service bank, allowing it to expand the products and services it offers.

KLARNA’S merchant customers in the US will soon be able to support AI agent-driven BNPL shopping transactions through Stripe’s shared payment tokens (SPT). Currently, AI shopping agents default to card-on-file payment credentials, which don’t include BNPL options for automated checkout at ecommerce merchants. The integration of Klarna with SPT solves that problem.

SPLITIT, which provides card-linked installment payments, is backing Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) open standard for agentic commerce. UCP was co-developed with Shopify, Walmart, Target, Etsy and Wayfair. It is designed to support the shopping journey from product discovery through checkout and  post-purchase engagement. Splitit is positioning flexible payment options for inclusion in agentic commerce.

NXTMOVES, a credit card program management platform with issuing capabilities supported by embedded transaction-level controls, has formed a partnership with LoanPro, which will act as the credit ledger and operational hub, handling payments and collections for Nxtmove’s clients.

MASTERCARD is collaborating with Google to expand support for Google Pay in Saudi Arabia. The collaboration enables Mastercard cardholders to add their cards to Google Wallet and make secure contactless payments in stores, online and for in-app purchases. Google Pay operates on Android devices and uses tokenization technology to help protect card information during transactions.

CELLPOINT DIGITAL has added PayPal as an option on its payment orchestration platform used by travel and retail merchants. The platform is available via a single integration. Merchants gain access to PayPal wallet accounts and that company’s BNPL service.

RAINFOREST provides embedded payment technology that software platforms can offer to merchants. The company has integrated with PayPal to enable its clients to offer their customers the opportunity to get paid via PayPal, Venmo and PayPal Pay Later. Software platforms gain access to all payment methods available from Rainforest via a single API connection.

EQUIFAX’S Income Confirm product for credit card lenders delivers verified employment and income data in conjunction with an Equifax credit report during the application process. Lenders receive the card applicant’s job status and calculated income, which assists in assessing risk and expediting approvals.

PAYSAFE, provider of a multinational processing platform that handled more than $150 billion in payments last year, has relaunched its US sales efforts aimed at small and midsized merchants. The company is recruiting independent agents to solicit restaurants, retail stores, healthcare providers, petroleum sellers and local service providers.

UNIONPAY cardholders have gained access to up to 13,000 NCR Atleos-operated Cashzone ATMs in the UK.

MEDIUS, provider of AP automation and spend management software, has formed a partnership with end-to-end payment processor Adyen to launch a corporate card program with integrated expense management reporting. The card will offer a 0.5% cash-back rewards program. Medius will launch in the EU and UK this quarter and in the US later this year.

TRANSACTION NETWORK SERVICES has launched TNSPay SmartRoute, which lets merchants, acquirers and processors define business rules to route transactions based on performance, geography cost or maintenance windows without waiting for third-party change tickets. Routing rules can be set in real time. Failover can be automated to maintain uninterrupted processing during incidents.