Organizations turn to fintechs for payment solutions that are as efficient and seamless as the transactions they facilitate. However, behind these smooth interfaces lies a labyrinth of challenges. Security concerns, regulatory compliance, and constant technological upgrades are just a few of the hurdles fintechs must navigate to provide what appear to be simple solutions. For clients, the expectation is straightforward: a payment solution that works flawlessly. The intricate complexity involved in meeting this expectation, though, often goes unnoticed. It’s easy to make something simple compl ..read more

With gift card spend projected to reach $267.3 billion by 2028, it’s clear that gift cards  are an influential force in the market. And the rise of digital gift cards, a trend that continues to gain momentum, is opening up new avenues to engage younger generations. During a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Blackhawk Network’s (BHN) Sarah Kositzke, Director of Research and Hilary Spidaliere, Director of Product Marketing, as well as Jordan Hirschfield, Director of Prepaid at Javelin Strategy & Research, explored, analyzed, and amplified the insights from this year’s Benchmark Report: 2 ..read more

Reconciliation is an essential aspect of the accounting process that improves transparency, maximizes decision-making, and ensures regulatory compliance. However, many merchants and payments organizations still rely on inefficient processes that can result in errors, financial losses, or violations. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Nick Botha, Global Payments Sales Manager at Autorek, and Don Apgar, Director of Merchant Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed the importance of optimizing the payments reconciliation process and explored the influence of automation on its eff ..read more

The United States is a unique banking market, with more than 11,000 financial institutions and some of the most stringent regulations in the world. With the launch of FedNow last year, The Clearing House’s RTP network, and a new messaging standard in ISO 20022, U.S.real-time payments have finally arrived. There’s only one problem: The infrastructure here is not ready.  In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Himanshu Pujara, Managing Director for Euronet Worldwide, and Elisa Tavilla, Director of Debit Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, spoke about how instant payments are hap ..read more

The end-of-the-year flurry of holiday shopping is a classic example of business seasonality. As fraud professionals have long observed, fraud activity also follows seasonal patterns, with seasonal upticks and slow-downs. The challenge has been reacting to seasonality with precision in real-time, instead of just recognizing them in the rear-view mirror. And new data shows that this seasonality doesn’t correlate to the business year as much as one might expect—fraudsters have a seasonal calendar all their own In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, NeuroID Head of Operational Strategy Nash Ali and ..read more

Now that the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard 4.0 has gone into effect, merchants have a year to conform to the 63 new or updated requirements. With many moving parts to the standard, some businesses may struggle to understand their compliance obligations. Simultaneously, they also don’t want to risk creating friction in the customer experience as they introduce the new security measures. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Sukanya Madhavan, Payments Chief Product and Technology Officer, at CSG Forte and Don Apgar, Director of Merchants Payment Practice for Javelin Strategy & ..read more

Though most people still refer to prepaid products as gift cards, that term has almost become a misnomer in today’s payments industry. Prepaid cards do so much more than carry gifts—not just for consumers but also for issuers. Savvy businesses use them to drive more consumer spending while increasing brand loyalty.  To that end, Fiserv recently worked with Javelin Strategy & Research on a survey of more than 500 buyers in the incentives area to find out what’s driving their purposes. The survey provided a jumping-off point for a recent PaymentsJournal podcast with Tom Niedbalski, Vic ..read more

The banking industry infamously divides itself into silos to address different aspects of the business, which can be problematic for customers who think they are dealing with a single entity. This can be especially difficult during onboarding and security checks, when different silos at the bank ask repeatedly for credentials. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Sunil Madhu, founder and CEO of Instnt, a fraud loss indemnification that covers the entire customer lifecycle, and Jennifer Pitt, Senior Analyst of Fraud and Security at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed the challenges of p ..read more

As awareness of the dangers of identity theft grows, it’s important to highlight a particularly insidious threat: stealing children’s identities. Although children have very limited financial activity, this ironically makes them appealing targets for fraudsters.    According to Javelin Strategy & Research, 1.7 million children had their personal information stolen in 2021-2022, resulting in nearly $1 billion in identity fraud loss. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Tracy Kitten, Director of Fraud and Security at Javelin, explained what makes children so vulnerable to identity ..read more

Even though the number of checks written continues to decline, mail theft remains on the rise. Beyond the theft of checks directly from mailboxes, there have been instances of stolen mail trucks. The ease of modifying checks allows criminals to simply wash and modify the payee’s name.  Q2’s positive pay system, used by roughly 550 banks across the country, is on track to stop more than $2.5 billion in fraud this year. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Bruce Dragoo, Manager, Solutions Consultant for Q2, and John Byl, SVP Product Development at Mercantile Bank of Michigan—a Q2 ..read more