Industry News

DATABRICKS’ Data Intelligence Platform will power a new Merchant Risk Management and Fraud Detection service from global services company Persistent Systems. Agentic AI is used to perform multisignal merchant vetting during onboarding, analyzing business profiles, compliance history, transaction patterns and external indicators to determine risk before any transactions occur. Once live, it continuously monitors transactions, chargebacks and third-party signals in real time to detect fraud or compliance risks.

BANCOPPEL, a retail bank in Mexico, has selected BPC to modernize its card and payment operations. The bank pioneered unsecured lending to consumers without any prior credit history. BPC’s modular SmartVista platform will upgrade the bank’s eGlobal domestic-only and Visa brand credit card issuing capabilities.

GR4VY, a cloud-based payment orchestration platform, will use an integration with open banking connectivity provider Plaid to support its pay by bank account-to-account payment service. Merchants gain access to Plaid’s bank connectivity that lets consumers authenticate and pay directly from their bank accounts during checkout.

KENSWITCH, Kenya’s shared payment infrastructure provider, has signed a framework agreement with Visa to collaborate on the country’s payment processing and settlement system. Visa and Kenswitch will explore opportunities for payment innovation and merchant acceptance. Kenswitch will have access to Visa’s value-added services for banks, fintechs and businesses, as well as products and services that support payment processing, card issuance and settlement.

ADYEN, provider of payment processing services to companies including H&M, Meta, Uber, eBay and Microsoft, has launched Intelligent Money Movement, a product for large global enterprises that connects payments, liquidity management and payouts on a single platform. According to Adyen, the average enterprise works with 5 or 6 banks, manages over 40 separate bank accounts and has 12 pay-in and pay-out providers. Intelligent Money Movement is designed to give businesses faster access to capital and make more proactive financial decisions.

CPI CARD has received a multiyear extension of its contract to provide credit and debit cards to the more than 4,000 credit union customers of Velera, a credit union services organization payment processor. The companies have worked together for more than 20 years.

BETMGM, a top sports betting and gaming company, plans to eliminate credit cards as a funding source for gambling wagers. The move follows similar actions taken by competitors FanDuel and DraftKings. Two other sports betting businesses, Fanatics and Betr, have never accepted credit cards. States including Iowa, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Vermont prohibit credit cards to be used to make deposits for online sportsbooks.

MARQETA, provider of a card issuing processing platform that handled nearly $400 billion in payments in 2025 for clients in more than 40 countries, has enhanced the AI-powered real-time decisioning feature it offers issuers to analyze risk in card authorizations.
Real-time decision risk scores, integrated into the Marqeta platform, let issuers customize rules and controls to manage fraud. The score evaluates more than 300 transaction attributes.

NEXI, the second largest merchant acquirer in Europe, will expand its partnership with PayPal from Italy to all other countries in Europe. PayPal will be integrated directly with Nexi’s merchant processing platform. This will make Nexi a payment service provider for PayPal transactions. Merchants will have an easier time adding PayPal as a checkout option. Payments and funds will flow through a single system. Integrated reporting tools will give merchants a view of all transactions in one place.

THE RESERVE BANK OF AUSTRALIA will prohibit surcharges to most credit, debit and prepaid consumer card transactions on Visa, Mastercard and eftpos (domestic debit) networks beginning October 1, 2026. Any fees merchants want to add to goods and services must be embedded in a published price. The RBA, which also lowered maximum interchange fees on credit and debit card payments, says that merchants paid $14 billion (USD) last year to accept card payments. Surcharges amounted to $1.1 billion (USD). Payment card acquirers must also provide merchants with transparency regarding all fees they charge. The aim is to allow merchants to compare prices among competitors.

EXPERIAN EXPRESS, a new credit reporting data product from Experian, is designed to give credit unions, community banks and other smaller-sized lenders data insights similar to what is available to their larger competitors. The product is delivered via a streamlined interface and API, making it easy to integrate credit information with a lender’s underwriting process. Also available is automated decisioning, portfolio monitoring and customizable credit models.

VELERA, a top provider of payment services to credit unions, has expanded its buy now, pay later capabilities to include Debit Flex Payments and Apple Pay’s Pay with Installments for credit transactions. Debit Flex Payments, which delivers personalized installment loan offers in real time, is available now. The service is powered by Equipifi. Apple Pay’s Pay with Installments will be available by year-end 2026. Velera has more than 4,000 credit union customers.

FISERV, the largest US merchant acquirer based on payment card transactions processed, will provide a pay by bank payment acceptance service to participating ecommerce websites and mobile apps of the Giant Company, Giant Food and Stop & Shop grocery stores. Those brands are companies of Ahold Delhaize USA. They comprise the largest retail grocery store group on the East Coast of the US and the fourth largest in the country.

BANK ZERO, a South Africa-based branchless, app-driven financial institution, will use UK-headquartered Paymentology as its issuer processor for Mastercard branded payment cards.

VISA offers a suite of six dispute resolution tools to help merchants, acquirers and financial institutions
cut administrative costs and reduce fraud-related losses. In 2025, Visa processed 106 million disputes worldwide. That number more than doubled from five years ago.

WOLFE COMPANIES provides private label prepaid card products and loyalty programs to national and global brands through its PerfectGift.com, Gift Card Granny, GiftYa and Give InKind portfolio companies. Pizza Hut, which has nearly 20,000 restaurants in 110 markets and territories, has engaged Wolfe to modernize and scale its prepaid card infrastructure.

UNITED AIRLINES has launched a Mastercard debit card in the UK in partnership with co-brand debit card program manager Currensea. The card can be linked to any UK bank account. Cardholders earn miles and access to travel rewards based on spending.

AMERICAN EXPRESS has made its flexible payment options (FPOs) available to new American Express Business Platinum and Gold Cardholders in the UK. FPOs provide new cardholders the option to repay their statement balance in full or pay a portion over time, with interest. Cardholders can manage payments in the Amex app.

DELUXE MERCHANT SERVICES will provide a payment processing platform to Washington Trust, a Spokane-based full-service bank with more than
$10 billion in assets.

YUNO, a provider of payment orchestration and other financial infrastructure to enterprise merchants and startups, has launched Payments Concierge, an always-on AI agent that monitors, analyzes and acts across a merchant’s full payment operations. Core capabilities include real-time anomaly detection that identifies drops in approval rates; autonomous optimization of payment routing; cost-level transparency for interchange and network fees; instant reporting and analysis; and multichannel access for payment teams available through WhatsApp, Telegram, WeChat and Slack.

AMERICAN EXPRESS and SAP CONCUR have expanded their partnership to include integration of Amex virtual cards with Concur Express, a user-driven setup process that helps new customers quickly configure and implement T&E expense management. Amex cards can be created within Concur Express for employees with limited or occasional spending needs. Cards can be used for travel expenses, subscriptions, office catering and events.

HUAWEI has integrated the Curve Pay wallet with its wearables portfolio in Europe to provide users with contactless payment functionality. Curve Pay, which was recently acquired by UK-based Lloyds Bank for $160 million, lets users spend from multiple cards stored in the wallet. All cards are consolidated into a single interface. Huawei has added off-wrist detection capabilities that require use of a passcode to reinstate spending from the wallet.

J.P. MORGAN PAYMENTS, the top commercial card issuer in the US,
is issuing virtual Mastercard cards in Europe aimed at helping insurance, healthcare, travel, commercial real estate and other businesses handle accounts payable. Mastercard’s B2B Supplier Enablement & Activation Service will be leveraged to connect buyers and suppliers.

ZELLE and BANK OF AMERICA have partnered to enable charitable disbursements from donor advised funds (DAFs). Nonprofit organizations will be able to receive grant funding in near real time versus the legacy process, which is paper based and takes weeks to complete. The DAF application is part of Zelle Forward, an initiative to expand the ways the person-to-person payment service can be used beyond the more than $1.200 trillion exchanged between consumer and business accounts last year. The Bank of America Charitable Gift Fund is the bank’s donor advised fund.

KLARNA, owner of a full banking license in Sweden and an e-money institution license in the UK, is a provider of flexible payment options to over 118 million people worldwide. The company, which processes 3.4 million transactions daily, has announced that its BNPL services are now available at more than a million merchants worldwide. That number grew 47% in 2025 by leveraging partnerships with payment service providers.