Industry News

MARQETA, a card issuing and payment processing platform, will expand the number of noncard networks it supports in the US to include the ACH, same-day ACH, push to card, the Clearinghouse’s RTP and the Federal Reserve’s FedNow Service. The expansion follows similar actions in Europe, where Marqeta added the Faster Payments Service (FPS) in the UK and SEPA in the European Union. It offers businesses additional options to pay suppliers, workers and contractors, facilitate employee reimbursements and make loyalty reward, rebate or insurance claims to consumers.

OKTO PAYMENTS, a Greece-based payment service provider, offers ecommerce merchants a direct connection via a single API to 16 million active users of the Yape wallet in Peru. More than 5 million merchants in Peru accept payments from Yape wallet users.

FEEDZAI’S advanced risk scoring and financial crime detection technology will be integrated with core transaction processing at Peoples Bank of Canada and Peoples Trust ahead of the rollout
of Canada’s Real-Time Rail (RTR) payment system.

SUNBIT, a provider of buy now, pay later and co-branded credit card programs that serve more than 40,000 US businesses, has launched a co-branded Mastercard  program with Hollywood Feed, a pet food retailer with nearly 200 retail locations. World Elite Mastercard cardholders will receive 20% off their first purchase at a Hollywood Feed store and 5% Hollywood Feed rewards on all purchases for the first year. Transportation Alliance Bank is the card issuer.

IN-SOLUTIONS GLOBAL, an India-based payment technology and infrastructure company, will facilitate Visa Payment Passkey transactions for issuers including Union Bank of India, Central Bank of India and Indian Overseas Bank. Visa Payment Passkey lets cardholders authenticate online and in-app payments using device biometrics or a device PIN instead of a one-time password.

XFLOW, a cross-border payment platform, offers global businesses the ability to receive payments from customers in India who use cards, bank transfers and UPI. Those methods account for about 85% of all payments in India and have a success rate that exceeds 95%. Funds are settled in US dollars. Xflow, which is backed by Stripe, PayPal Ventures and General Catalyst, manages full authorization under the Reserve Bank of India’s Payment Aggregator—Cross-Border framework for imports and exports.

VISA, _ABLE and ONAFRIQ have partnered to support the expansion of the Visa Flex Credential token service across Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa (CEMEA). Visa Flex Credential enables issuers to offer multiple funding sources through a single card. Financial institutions can extend access to credit through eligible debit and prepaid credentials, helping to support broader financial inclusion. Onafriq is a pan-African payment company connected to money transfer operators, 500 million bank accounts and nearly 1 billion mobile wallets. Fintech company _able is a B2B financial technology infrastructure provider.

Credit Card Statistics And Trends

"JP Morgan Chase was the largest U.S. credit card issuer by purchase volume in 2024 at more than $1.344 trillion, according to Nilson, followed by American Express at $1.168 trillion and Citi at $616.1 billion."

FINDUSTRY AI builds AI agents for payment workflows, including Chargeback Agent, which automates disputes from end to end. Chargeback Agent collects evidence, builds arguments and submits responses, so that merchants don’t have to. Maverick Payments, a full service payment provider to ISVs, ISOs and financial institutions, has added Chargeback Agent to its platform.

AMERICAN EXPRESS corporate customers that use central-bill funding accounts can now create, manage and use Amex virtual cards in Amex’s software platform, @ Work.

PAYPAL has integrated with Nelnet Campus Commerce (NCC) making PayPal and Venmo tuition payment options to more than 8 million college students at over 1,000 campuses. NCC is PCI Level 1 validated and integrated with all top ERP systems. PayPal’s Venmo P2P payment platform has more than 100 million active users in the US.

ACCERTIFY, a fraud prevention platform provider that analyzed more than 10 billion transactions valued at over $1 trillion in 2025, has received HIPAA compliance. The company can now work for heathcare organizations and healthcare-adjacent businesses. Losses to fraud cost the US healthcare industry more than $65 billion annually, including a rising problem tied to HSA cards.

SWIPESIMPLE, the payment platform of CardFlight, now offers its more than 125,000 small business customers ACH-based bank-to-bank payments through invoices and payment links. The new capability is provided by Nuvei. ACH in SwipeSimple is available through Cardflight’s network of resellers.

MARQETA will provide its card issuing clients with access to preauthorization risk intelligence based on Riskified’s global network of merchant transaction data. Riskified’s data, available directly in Marqeta’s card issuing platform, helps issuers approve more legitimate transactions and reduce false declines.

UNIONPAY INTERNATIONAL will expand merchant acceptance in nine countries in Africa through a partnership with South Africa-based Standard Bank. Nearly 900 online merchants based in Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe will offer UnionPay card acceptance in local currency, USD or both. More than 7 million UnionPay cards are issued in Africa.

INTER PAG, the merchant acquiring business of Banco Inter that serves more than 100,000 small and midsize businesses in Brazil, will deploy ACI Worldwide’s cloud-based ACI Acquiring Platform, which also includes back office card management capabilities from RS2.

GCASH, the top mobile payment service in the Philippines, will expand in-store payment options for its 40 million active monthly users by allowing access to Visa and Mastercard cards. The Gcash mobile app is also used for bill payments, domestic money transfers and airtime purchases. GCash’s parent company, Mynt, is planning an IPO on the Philippine Stock Exchange by the end of 2026.

PPRO, a local payment platform provider to PSPs, will work with Blik, the top payment brand in Poland for e-commerce transactions, to develop capabilities for agentic commerce. Polski Standard Płatności is the operator of BLIK.

LITHIC and MONAVATE have formed a partnership to offer companies combined card account processing and global card program management. Monavate holds Visa, Mastercard and Discover issuing licenses, has its own BINs in the UK and EEA and provides global settlement capabilities. Lithic offers credit, debit and prepaid card processing support including direct network connections.

ELAVON, the 10th largest merchant acquirer in Europe, has renewed its partnership with Sage, provider to small and midsize businesses of software that handles accounting, financial, HR and payroll. Sage customers in Ireland and the UK gain access to Elavon’s integrated acquiring and gateway services.

HESAB will issue up to 1 million Visa cards in Afghanistan through Visa Pay, which embeds support for ecommerce, remittances, virtual cards, disbursements and processing enablement in mobile apps.

SECURE TECHNOLOGY ALLIANCE has launched the Agentic Trust and Commerce Forum to bring together companies from multiple industries, including LLM (large language model) providers, to address trust, interoperability and governance challenges associated with AI agents that transact on behalf of consumers and businesses. The forum aims to develop practical, consensus-driven frameworks that reflect how payments, identity and commerce actually work. The Agentic Trust and Commerce Forum was spun out of the U.S. Payments Forum.

PARKOPEDIA and PARKMOBILE are collaborating to deliver in-car payments for parking at 80,000 US locations. ParkMobile connects to parking locations nationwide. Parkopedia provides the integration expertise needed to embed parking payments into a vehicle’s dashboard. Both companies are owned by Arrive Solutions.

NUVEI’S global payment infrastructure has been embedded into Blackline’s invoice presentment and payment workflows service for finance teams at enterprise-sized companies. Blackline customers can settle an invoice as soon as it is received and have the payment matched and reconciled automatically.

VARO BANK, an all-digital, nationally chartered consumer bank, has connected to 2,000 Kroger store locations through the Green Dot embedded finance platform and money processing network. The bank’s customers gain access to a no-fee, over-the-counter capability to add cash to their bank accounts.