PaymentsJournal

Episodes

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  Embedded Finance: Banks’ New Growth Channel 19.08.2026 21m

  In the past, a community bank in Connecticut could attract customers through physical branches and marketing efforts, but expanding beyond its geographic footprint was cumbersome. Today, that same bank can partner with a single independent software vendor (ISV) and unlock a channel to thousands of customers across the U.S. who were previously unreachable. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, George Malesky, Director of Partnership Development at Qualpay, and Don Apgar, Director of Merchant Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed how ISVs’ growing role in embedded finance is creating a new distribution strategy for financial institutions. The evolution of this model has also fundamentally shifted the role of banks. Rather than simply offering accounts and payment rails, more institutions are becoming embedded finance enablers—a strategy that can position community and regional banks as integral financial services providers. The Four-Legged Table Consumers may not ask for embedded finance by name, but they expect to pay within the apps and websites they already use—not through a separate banking portal. That expectation has carried into the business environment, where merchants across industries want payment capabilities built directly into the software they use to run their businesses. Embedded finance has emerged to meet this demand, and its success depends on four interconnected participants: sponsor banks, Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) providers, ISVs, and end customers. At the foundation is the sponsor bank, which provides regulated financial services such as holding deposits, issuing accounts, and facilitating access to payment networks. The sponsor bank is responsible for regulatory compliance, anti-money laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) oversight, and financial risk management. BaaS firms provide the technology and operational infrastructure that makes embedded finance possible. They build the APIs that support functions such as digital onboarding, payment orchestration, underwriting automation, compliance workflows, settlement and reconciliation, and white-label capabilities. ISVa bring those capabilities directly to the businesses that need them. They are responsible for customer support and product adoption, both of which are critical to the success of an embedded finance offering. In the process, they maintain one of the model’s most valuable assets: the customer relationship. That relationship gives ISVs access to vast amounts of data about business behavior and industry-specific pain points—insight that can inform both the products they offer and the financial services layered into them. “Banks don’t naturally have these workflows,” Malesky said. “An accounting software knows exactly when a business sends invoices; a healthcare platform knows when patients are going to make payments; a property management platform knows when rent’s going to be collected. They have a more intimate knowledge, and that context allows financial services to appear exactly when and where they are needed.” The final participant in the end customer, who validates and powers the entire system. Each party plays a distinct role, and the model depends on their ability to work together. Remove one piece, and the broader embedded finance ecosystem quickly begins to break down. “Without the bank, you’d have no regulatory banking products,” Malesky said. “Without the platform, no scalable APIs or automation. Without the ISVs, there would be no customer distribution, and without the customer, there’s no adoption of revenue.” “You can think of it as a four-legged table. Take out one leg and make it wobbly,” he said. “There’s no independence here, each one of those legs makes it all come together and makes it work.” A Workflow, Not a Destination While all four participants are essential, ISVs occupy a particularly important position because they sit closest to the end customer. That position has created meaningful financial, strategic, and competitive advantages for software providers. The most obvious is a new source of revenue. Instead of relying solely on subscription fees, ISVs can participate in payment processing revenue and generate additional income from banking and financial services. These opportunities can include treasury services, lending, referrals, and deposit programs. The value extends beyond revenue. Embedded finance can bolster customer retention by bringing payments, banking, invoicing, reconciliation, and financing together within a single platform. For merchants, the convenience of managing these functions in one place can make a software platform much harder to replace. “Once that software is wrapped into the business, it’s very hard for a business owner to change software platforms,” Apgar said. “They basically have to start over, not just with their menu if they’re a restaurant, but with all of their suppliers, recipes and inventory levels. Unless the software is flat-out not working, there’s very little incentive. There’s a high barrier to change on the business owner’s part.” “When you’re a bank providing embedded finance and going along for the ride, you’ve acquired not just a customer, but a very sticky and stable customer,” he said. There is an experience advantage, too. Embedded finance allows business owners to access financial services through the same intuitive, consumer-grade digital experiences they have come to expect elsewhere. For merchants accustomed to navigating fragmented and complex financial workflows, that can represent a shift. “If you think about a restaurant owner, at 2:30 or 3:00 in the afternoon between shifts in the past, they might say, ‘I have to go out now and run to the bank,’” Malesky said. “Instead, they should be thinking about ‘I need to pay my suppliers’ and then taking 20 to 30 steps into the back office.” “Banking simply happens in the background of everything else they do, that’s where embedded financial services create additional value,” he said. “The software becomes a more complete and holistic operating system for the business, and it’s a workflow instead of a destination.” Becoming an Embedded Finance Enabler Taken together, these benefits have pushed ISVs to the forefront of embedded finance, and that shift is changing what banks need to provide. Historically, many banks viewed their role as complete once they facilitated services such as opening deposit accounts, processing ACH transfers, issuing cards, or conducting wire transfers. But as these individual services have become more commoditized, the opportunity for banks has moved upstream. Rather than providing financial products, institutions can provide the infrastructure that allows those products to become part of a broader software experience.   “Think of it as an acquirer-in-a-box, giving an ISV, PayFac, or fintech everything they need to launch financial services quickly, without building that additional infrastructure themselves,” Malesky said. “The platforms typically include API-first architecture, modern APIs that allow the ISVs to integrate banking directly into their software without expensive custom development and additional work. They want it to function just like any other cloud service.” That means delivering digital onboarding experiences through which customers can open accounts, complete KYB and KYC requirements, apply for merchant services accounts, receive underwriting decisions, and begin processing payments. Compliance is another critical piece of the equation. Banks need to provide the oversight and controls required to support embedded financial services while giving ISV partners the infrastructure to manage those obligations effectively.   “I always talk about compliance being the heaviest lift because anyone outside the industry—especially ISVs—when you come into payments and banking, you don’t quite realize everything that’s involved,” Malesky said. “That includes AML, OFAC, KYB, transaction monitoring, risk scoring, and the list goes on and on. It is an expansive requirement, for good reason, that outside of banks becomes a difficult and expensive challenge.” The customer experience matters just as much. Embedded finance platforms should offer white-label capabilities so financial services can appear seamlessly within an ISV’s platform and carry its branding. Customers should not feel as though they are being redirected to a third-party or an external website. Banks can extend this value further through merchant portfolio management. Rather than limiting reporting and risk monitoring tools to their own internal teams, they can give ISV partners visibility into merchant performance, portfolio health, and risk. The commercial model matters as well. Establishing clear revenue-sharing arrangements gives banks and ISVs a share incentive to grow the relationship and deepen the financial services offered through the platform. Finally, banks should establish mechanisms to capture and use the data generated through these partnerships. One of the most powerful advantages of embedded finance is the visibility it provides into business transactions and cash flow. That information can help banks underwrite more accurately, offer appropriate working capital, reduce credit risk, and ultimately improve customer outcomes. Shifting the Distribution Strategy All of these capabilities point to a shift in how banks can approach distribution. The institutions that provide embedded finance infrastructure are positioning themselves for a financial services landscape that won’t be defined by the largest branch network or the broadest product catalog. Instead, it will be shaped by institutions that can deliver banking services wherever businesses choose to work. For community and regional banks, that shift may seem daunting. But they don’t need to build an entire embedded finance ecosystem from scratch. Solutions like those offered by Qualpay can provide modern embedded finance APIs and onboarding workflows that connect financial institutions to ISVs—and, through those partnerships, to the broader digital economy. “They have to find the right partners and then enable their software companies to become banking distribution partners,” Malesky said. “With the right platform, banks can onboard partners in weeks instead of years, and automate all the things that we process to make the experience so seamless for their customers.” “Then, the technology becomes a multiplier. Embedded finance-era technology isn’t just an enabler of growth, it is the distribution strategy,” he said.
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  How Leading Brands Are Building Better Digital Gift Card Experiences 18.08.2026 28m

  The gap between good and great gift card programs is widening. While most brands offer some form of gift card, the leaders are distinguishing themselves through more sophisticated direct digital experiences. Sometimes referred to as first-party or owned gift cards, direct digital gift cards are purchased through a merchant’s own website or app. As NAPCO Research uncovered in its 2026 Best Direct Digital Gift Cards Benchmark Report, conducted in partnership with BHN, direct digital gift cards represent an unoptimized revenue stream for organizations. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Sarah Kositzke, Global Insights Director at Blackhawk Network (BHN), Joe Keenan, Editor-in-Chief, Total Retail, aNAPCO Media brand, and Jordan Hirschfield, Director of Prepaid at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed the report’s findings, what they reveal about the evolving gift card landscape, and the strategies separating top performing brands from the rest. Why Gift Cards? The strongest gift card programs begin with a simple premise: gift cards are no longer a peripheral offering, but a key driver of revenue and customer engagement. That opportunity is only becoming more significant. NAPCO projects the U.S. and Canadian gift card market will reach $547 billion by 2030, with digital gift cards accounting for roughly $216 billion. This rapid growth is driven by consumers finding more reasons to buy gift cards and having more purchasing options than ever before. “Consumers are buying about nine cards across the entirety of the year, and birthdays are a great example. But it works for the holidays and it works for teacher appreciation. There’s just so many different occasions where people are looking for that right gift,” Kositzke said. “They might be like, ‘I think that so-and-so might like this brand’ and then you’ve got your multi-brand cards that help suffice for multiple things that somebody might be interested in, all the way to your open-loop cards like Visa and Mastercard,” she said. Another growth catalyst is the increasing number of gift cards purchased through loyalty and rewards programs, reflecting the broader trend toward self-use. At the same time, consumers are giving gift cards for a wider range of occasions, including appreciation, condolences, or simply to surprise and delight recipients. Even in categories where physical gifts have traditionally been the norm, gift cards are gaining traction. This is due in part to ongoing macroeconomic pressures, with many consumers operating under tighter budgets. In cases where a buyer can’t afford an entire gift, a gift card can still help the recipient put it toward a larger purchase. “Wedding gifts can be big and expensive, and maybe they just want an experience,” Hirschfield said. “It’s buying a gift card to add to that versus back in the old days when I got married and you got one piece of china. Literally, people bought me a bowl. I don’t want that anymore, and the younger generation definitely doesn’t want that, so buying that gift card is a key thing.” A Comprehensive Benchmark Report Amid this surge in prepaid popularity, NAPCO Research evaluated the state of direct digital gift card offerings. In the ninth edition of its annual report, the firm assessed 120 North American brands—110 based in the U.S., and new this year,10 in Canada. The evaluations were conducted using a secret shopper methodology, with assessors reviewing both the purchase and recipient experience and scoring each program against 147 unique criteria. These criteria encompassed the entire purchaser and recipient journey across desktop, mobile web, and mobile app platforms. “We’re looking at categories including discoverability, offering flexibility, the checkout and post-purchase experience, the recipient experience, marketing of gift cards, customer service, B2B programs, and credit card rewards,” Keenan said.  The company expanded its research to include 20 different product verticals, adding four new categories in 2026 — automotive and auto parts, discount and dollar stores, on-demand delivery services, and pet supplies. In addition to expanding its evaluation segments, NAPCO introduced new criteria this year, including AI search, group gifting, animated cards, delivery notifications, and purchase flow integrity. The report’s objective is not only to gauge the state of the gift card industry, but also to provide actionable insights. It also outlines best practices brands can use to strengthen their gift card programs, improve performance, and drive ROI. “To help them do that, we’ve created this benchmark,” Keenan said. “We have year-over-year data, and then you can look at it and take a slice of it for the 2026 year and look at how your gift card program compares to those top performers—measuring yourself against your competitors and the retail industry at large.” “It can be that learning tool to help accelerate growth within their own gift card programs,” he said. How the Top Performers Invest Overall, brands’ scores improved this year, but the average score of 67% indicates there is still room for improvement. It is perhaps no surprise that this year’s top U.S. performers were some of the country’s largest retailers: Best Buy, Amazon, and Staples. The top Canadian brands were Lululemon and The Home Depot.  “What sets these top performers apart from some of the others?” Kositzke asked. “That high score was driven by discoverability. Are we able to find your brand’s gift card within that site [or app] easily? Are you promoting that card on your site, but also on other channels as well?” “Are you offering that flexible delivery option, being able to meet that consumer where they are, being able to communicate to friends and family and colleagues exactly how you communicate with them today, but through the niceness of delivering a gift card?” she said. Another common trait among the top performers is their investment in mobile experiences. This is intentional, as mobile commerce has begun to significantly outpace desktop-driven e-commerce. As a result, brands should optimize the mobile shopping experience for both gift card buyers and recipients. For example, recipients should be able to easily redeem cards, check balances, and reload gift cards from their mobile devices. Along with delivering a digital-first experience, leading gift card programs give customers more choice. Shoppers should be able to purchase both physical and digital cards.. That same flexibility should extend to delivery. While email remains a reliable option, customers increasingly expect to send and receive gift cards through their preferred channels. “When looking at the data for this year, SMS delivery was a differentiating feature between top performers versus some of the merchants that were further down in the rankings,” Keenan said. “That’s something that organizations should think about incorporating into their own gift card program is that SMS delivery. It speaks to the growing popularity of mobile shopping.” Areas of Opportunity Despite overall improvements and a number of innovative features introduced this year, two areas continue to lag: marketing and customer service. “We check for marketing a couple of times throughout the assessment,” Kositzke said. “Especially during that holiday time frame, are you marketing your gift card program to allow people to know that you have one, and here is the best solution for gifting?” “Then also customer service, so being able to address issues and questions quickly,” she said. “Consumers are often in that mindset of, ‘Why can’t I have an answer now versus having to wait 48 hours or a week or seven days to get back to me on a question that I might have?’” One key best practice is to regularly audit the entire gift card program by completing the full purchaser and recipient journey and identifying friction points throughout the process. This step is critical because even minor points of friction can have significant downstream consequences. “You want to build a checkout experience that works every time,” Keenan said. “It seems simple and self-explanatory, but you’d be surprised at how often there are snags in the gift card purchase process. And if that process doesn’t go through the first time, chances are you’re going to lose that customer. They’re not going to come back and try it a second or third time. It needs to work  right the first time.” Much More to Uncover The brands that recognize this opportunity—and continue evolving their gift card experiences—will be the ones best positioned to turn a simple purchase into a lasting customer connection. By combining seamless mobile experiences, flexible options, and stronger promotion, organizations can unlock the full potential of gift cards as a strategic engagement channel.   That said, organizations must also remain agile as the preferences and expectations of younger consumers continue to evolve. “Younger shoppers, primarily millennials and Gen Z, are increasingly turning to gift cards for affordability issues,” Keenan said. “They’re thinking about budgeting and how they can use gift cards for their own self-use or for gifting to others.” Another force to monitor is technology, which—like every industry—has the potential to rapidly reshape the prepaid landscape. “AI is a hot topic across every industry,” Kositzke said. “This past year, we included a couple of key assessment points around AI and being able to find gift cards. But to be honest, when we did the report for our partners, one of the key questions that kept coming up was, ‘What about this with AI and what about that with AI?’” “When we think about those criteria for 2027, how do we level up some of the things around AI and how are we going to assess those?” she said. “Sometimes the most interesting things are the: ‘Hey, but we have so much more to uncover.’” Read the 9th annual benchmark report with NAPCO Research.
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  When AI Changes Fraud, Trust Becomes Everything 17.08.2026 26m

  Trust has always been the foundation of the credit union movement. Today, that trust is facing one of its greatest tests. Artificial intelligence is making fraud more convincing, more scalable and more difficult to detect. As AI becomes more embedded in commerce, credit unions face a difficult balancing act—embracing innovation while protecting members from evolving threats. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Karen Postma, Senior Vice President of Risk Solutions at Velera and Suzanne Sando, Lead Fraud Management Analyst at Javelin Strategy and Research, discussed how AI-driven fraud, deepfakes and the emergence of agentic commerce could jeopardize the critical bond between members and credit unions. Not only has this made it imperative for institutions to implement robust technological safeguards, it has also highlighted the importance of effective education and communication in maintaining strong member relationships. Questioning the Source of Truth Criminals have forged ahead in the AI arms race, largely because they aren’t constrained by compliance, operational or ethical obligations. As concerning as this is for financial institutions, consumers have also become aware of the risks as well. Many have seen first hand how AI has made fraudulent communications more convincing through sophisticated scam texts, phishing emails and other impersonation attempts. And they understand these tactics are just the tip of the iceberg. “I don’t think this is an overreaction,” Sando said. “We have information overload when it comes to AI. From a consumer perspective, you’re hearing about it in the news all the time—the good, the bad and the ugly. You’re hearing about the ethical debates and the effects on the environment. We can’t get away from it, and that may play into some of the fears that consumers have with AI.” Consumer concerns have grown as deepfakes have demonstrated how convincingly AI can mimic a person’s voice or likeness in audio and video. These tools can be used to deceive friends and family, authorize fraudulent transactions or facilitate blackmail and other scams. However, deepfakes are also indicative of the double-edged nature of AI. While consumers worry about becoming victims of these attacks, technology is also lowering the barrier for individuals to commit first-party fraud. “That happens all the time, and then they’re disputing it or claiming some type of loss when in actuality that wasn’t the case,” Postma said. “Unfortunately, the accessibility of innovation in AI has made us question everything more, versus trusting in the consumer.” “That’s a weird position to be in. The member has always been our best source of truth, and unfortunately, I don’t know that we’re in that environment any longer,” she said. The Emergence of Agentic Commerce This dual nature of technology has also raised concerns about the emergence of agentic commerce, where consumers entrust AI agents to act as autonomous personal shoppers. Consumers already use AI to compare prices, research products and find the right item. However, fully autonomous agentic commerce is an entirely different proposition. “You’re trusting an agent to understand your intent, and you’re also trusting that agent to be able to execute in the way that you would want them to,” Postma said. “Such things as understanding intent from the initiation of the prompt, all the way through the transaction, all the way to a potential dispute process—and making sure that transparency is there. That’s going to be a critical avenue where the industry is going to have to adapt and figure out how to share that information.” Beyond the foundational challenges of building these systems, fraud prevention becomes more complex. Rather than authenticating a transaction, financial institutions will also need to verify the customer’s intent and ensure the AI agent is acting according to the customer’s wishes. Introducing a third party into the traditional transaction model also creates new avenues for fraud. Both the agent and the customer will require authentication, potentially necessitating the development of Know Your Agent policies that mirror Know Your Customer requirements. This could include building profiles for AI agents that document aspects like behavioral patterns, permissions, and preferred merchants. These profiles could help identify when an agent has been compromised or manipulated. Alongside these infrastructure changes, the returns process—already a common target for fraud—will also need to evolve. “The number of disputes increases drastically—I’m using the word ‘dispute’ intentionally and not ‘fraud’—because in those cases, consumers forget that they empowered an agent to go purchase this for them,” Postma said. “They don’t recognize the transaction because they empowered that agent a couple weeks ago.” “Those kinds of things happen in that fully autonomous world, and we don’t necessarily have the infrastructure to mitigate those disputes at the moment,” she said. High Stakes and Tight Budgets As credit unions work to defend against AI-driven fraud while preparing for agentic commerce, many are developing strategies to modernize their fraud prevention programs. However, because these investments have far-reaching implications, institutions are often challenged to determine how best to allocate limited fraud prevention resources.   “Fraud is always at the bottom of budget prioritization, whether we like it or not,” Sando said. “It’s either compliance or regulation updates that take priority; it’s some enhancement that will benefit customers; it’s a new product that’s going to bring a new revenue. At the end of the day, it’s, ‘Whatever we have leftover, we’ll throw at the fraud problem.’ That’s never going to be enough if fraud doesn’t get the prioritization that it not only deserves, but it needs.” Given the high stakes and tight budgets, partnerships can provide credit unions and community banks with an effective way to balance speed to market with the need to adapt to a rapidly changing environment. “There are starting to be a number of providers in the marketplace, Velera being one of them, that allow for what we call an orchestration layer,” Postma said. “It allows the financial institution to integrate once on the back end, and it is powered by a number of different solutions. With such things as orchestrators to be able to leverage some of that technology, it becomes much more strategic and intentional around how we prevent fraud.” Education, Transparency and Trust Technology alone is not enough. Equally important are educating members and fostering transparency. Too often, banks and credit unions rely on generic fraud education that fails to resonate with customers. “You need to have real-world and contextual examples, things that are specific to someone’s demographic. Like saying: ‘We’re seeing a higher concentration of elders being targeted by a certain scam or people who are Gen Z or who use digital wallets,’” Sando said. “If you’re putting it into context, it helps put the threat into a space that doesn’t feel scary and insurmountable, but it does feel real.” As scam communications have become more convincing, many customers have begun ignoring all digital messages—including legitimate fraud alerts from their financial institution. This makes proactive, ongoing education essential. Credit unions should help members recognize common fraud tactics and understand how the institution communicates with them. Given the sophistication of today’s fraud landscape, that education must extend far beyond a handful of documents buried within an online banking website. “It’s education internally, it’s education to the consumer, and from a credit union perspective and the role that we play in communities, we have an opportunity to educate within schools and other community-based areas around what socially engineered scams are. Your member is your line of defense,” Postma said. “Educating and being transparent about what’s going on and playing a critical role, even outside of interactions that happen at the financial institution,” she said. “That becomes our most effective method.”
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  The Use Cases Propelling the FedNow® Service’s Growth—and Shaping Its Future 10.08.2026 20m

  Customers no longer measure service in days or even hours—they measure it in seconds. Whether they’re paying employees, closing on a home, moving money between accounts, or covering an unexpected expense, they expect funds to be available immediately. That demand for speed is fueling the rapid growth of real-time payments, particularly those enabled by the Federal Reserve’s FedNow Service. In a PaymentsJournal Podcast, Bernadette Ksepka, SVP, Deputy Head of Product Management for the FedNow Service; Shankar Jayaraman, Director of NOW Network at Fiserv; and Ben Danner, Senior Analyst of Debit at Javelin Strategy and Research, discussed the use cases driving the service’s momentum and how financial institutions that have yet to join the network can position themselves to meet evolving customer expectations. Breaking Records Every Day As more use cases for FedNow go live and more institutions participate, adoption continues to accelerate. Every week, the FedNow Service is breaking its own records. It recently surpassed 1,776 financial institutions on board, which according to Ksepka is an appropriate number for a U.S. payment system to celebrate. Fifty service providers support FedNow connectivity, and new banks are joining the network almost daily. The service now reaches all 50 states and includes seven of the top U.S. banks. “And 95% of our participants are community banks and credit unions,” said Ksepka. “They’re offering instant payments alongside some of the nation’s largest institutions. This isn’t just large banks chasing new technology. A credit union in rural Montana wants the same real-time tools that a major bank in New York City wants.” Finding New Avenues for Growth FedNow’s growth is being fueled by a combination of expanding participation and an increasing number of real-world use cases. One of the fastest-growing areas is earned wage access and off-cycle payroll. Workers no longer want to wait two weeks for a paycheck, and employers are using the FedNow Service to provide access to earned wages or pay employees at the end of a shift. For many families, that can mean the difference between paying rent on time and falling behind. The service is also reshaping major life events. Homebuyers can send escrow payments instantly, while car buyers can complete financing and drive off the lot immediately—even on weekends. Digital wallet funding and defunding has emerged as another significant use case, enabling money to move seamlessly in and out of brokerage accounts, payment apps and other digital platforms. Businesses are finding value in real-time payments as well. Major fintechs are partnering with FedNow to deliver new capabilities to their customers, while small businesses are using the service to pay suppliers faster, improve cash flow, and reduce reliance on checks. For financial institutions, account-to-account transfers remain a significant opportunity. Many consumers maintain multiple accounts and increasingly expect to move money instantly between them, whether within the same institution or across different banks. Behind this growth are several structural advantages. The expanding number of participating financial institutions continues to increase the network’s reach, while FedNow’s direct participation model allows banks to settle transactions through their Fed master accounts. Another catalyst came last year with the introduction of instant government payouts, demonstrating the potential of real-time payments at scale. “FEMA was the first agency to make disbursements over FedNow through Treasury’s digital payout program,” said Ksepka. “When families are dealing with a crisis, getting those funds immediately instead of waiting days for a check to arrive and clear is not just more convenient, it’s critical. Other agencies are now using the service, with more expected to join in the near term.” Tracking Payment Numbers The growing use of the FedNow Service for larger-value transactions is evident in the numbers. As the financial institutions serving businesses use the network for everything from vendor payments and disbursements to corporate transfers and brokerage-related transactions, the average payment value has climbed well beyond that of other real-time payment networks. In 2025, according to Danner’s research, the average FedNow transaction exceeded $100,000, compared with approximately $4,000 on The Clearing House’s RTP network as of June 2025. “Adopters of FedNow are seeing more high-value B2B payments, while something like RTP is going to be more consumer-focused,” said Danner. “That being said, average value per payment has actually declined on FedNow despite the overall volume growth. That suggests broadening use cases beyond the historical high value corporate transactions. Ksepka added: “That’s the beauty of the platform. We are use-case agnostic, and it’s a platform for innovation that allows for any types of use cases.” Overcoming Concerns Financial institutions still face several obstacles when it comes to adopting instant payments. Three concerns come up repeatedly, starting with core system readiness: Is the institution prepared to process 24/7/365 real-time transactions? The second is liquidity management. How do institutions keep accounts funded when they are sending money? Is there a risk of running a negative balance? “Most of the financial institutions who are sending today have solved that by taking baby steps,” Jaramayan said. “Come in on the network. Participate in the network. Receive first. Your ability to receive payments gives you a perspective of how things are in that space. All the rest then falls in line right after, one after the other.” The third is internal prioritization. Many financial institutions approach instant payments as a technology initiative when, in reality, it’s a product decision. Every institution has competing priorities and long project backlogs, but instant payments are increasingly becoming table stakes, and customers are coming to expect these capabilities. “For late adopters, my biggest advice is don’t overthink it,” said Ksepka. “Start simple. You don’t need 10 use cases on day one. Pick one meaningful opportunity for your customers, maybe weekend auto loans or faster B2B payments. You learn from there.” FedNow Into the Future As it moves forward, the FedNow Service is focused on three goals: unlocking more innovation, strengthening security and risk mitigation, and preparing for the next wave of instant payment capabilities. That includes features such as Request for Payment and, eventually, cross-border payments. “We’re super excited about a group of innovative early adopters coming together to work with us to test these new flows, explore new features, and really help shape what 24/7 international payments look like,” Ksepka said. One of the newest tool provides sender institutions with receiver account signals to help assess risk before a payment is sent over the network. FedNow is also exploring ways to make payee name verification easier through a real-time API, giving institutions another layer of assurance before payments are made from their customers’ accounts. “The biggest message is don’t get left behind and don’t give your customers a reason to look elsewhere for financial services,” said Jarayaman. “Now is the time to adopt if you haven’t. The financial institutions who ultimately win will be the ones who treat real-time as an infrastructure, not as a feature.”
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  The Rise of Programmatic Payments and the New Compliance Challenge 06.08.2026 23m

  A payment used to begin with a person making a decision: swiping a card, approving a transfer, or authorizing a purchase. Increasingly, that decision is being embedded into software. As programmatic payments become more common—and as agentic AI expands their reach—financial institutions must adapt to a landscape where transactions may be initiated by systems acting on behalf of businesses and consumers. The opportunity is significant, but so is the challenge of ensuring those systems behave as intended.   In a PaymentsJournal Podcast, FinScan’s Kieran Holland, Global Head of Solutions Engineering, and Chris Ostrowski, Head of Product Management, as well as James Wester, Co-Head of Payments at Javelin Strategy and Research, explored the present and future of programmatic payments—from the rise of automated transactions to the new demands they create for fraud prevention, compliance, and oversight. A World of Multiple Payments One reason programmatic payments have become increasingly important is that financial activity is becoming more continuous and embedded into everyday processes. Instead of a handful of large, manually initiated payments, businesses and consumers are relying on a steady stream of smaller, automated transactions triggered by specific events, behaviors, or needs. “We all want to pay our Netflix subscriptions,” said Holland. “We all want Alexa to go out and buy groceries when we say, ‘Hey Alexa, I’m running low on mangos.’ Programmatic payments is just the background technology that’s driving a more transactional world.” Digital platforms have also normalized recurring and event-driven payments. Consumers are more comfortable authorizing transactions that occur automatically under specific conditions—whether that means renewing a subscription, purchasing additional credits for an AI platform after reaching a usage threshold, or completing a payment triggered by a predefined event. These experiences have changed consumer expectations around when and how payments can happen, making automated transactions feel like a natural part of everyday digital interactions. “You have that ability to trigger searches and purchases when that TV you’ve been waiting forever to buy hits that right price point,” said Ostrowski. “It’s similar to the concept within the stock market where you’re waiting for stocks take a certain price and then it executes. That’s very much similar what you’re doing to these programmatic payments in a 24/7/365 economy.” Moving at Machine Speed Especially for larger organizations, payments are no longer just financial events. They are increasingly embedded directly into digital platforms and operational systems. When programmatic payments are triggered by events such as a completed transaction or a supply chain milestone, companies can maintain control while automating workflows and allowing money to move at machine speed. These changes are happening at the consumer level as well. For example, parking apps have become a common frustration for drivers visiting new locations. Many parking lots now require downloading a separate app before a payment can be made. “I used to have to type my credit card information into each and every single one of these parking apps depending on where I was parking,” said Holland. “I went to the coast and this new parking app said, ‘Do you want to log in with Google?’ Yes. ‘Do you want to authorize a payment through Google Pay?’ Yes, I do.” “Four hours later, it prompted me: ‘Hey, you’re running low on parking time. Do you want to add some more?’ Yes, done. That’s a really tangible advantage, where I can just delegate it through Google Pay or Apple Pay,” he said. Fighting Financial Crime & Fraud Because these payments are completed so quickly—and because many involve relatively small dollar amounts—existing fraud detection and security systems must evolve to identify and mitigate emerging risks. “Your systems really have to be fine-tuned to detect those risks as they are happening,” said Ostrowski. “You can’t rely on the analysts coming in at 8:00 AM. You have to have the right technology in place, the right monitoring place 24 hours a day, seven days a week to make sure that you are properly evaluating those payments as they flow through.” Strong guardrails will be essential as these payments evolve. In the traditional payments environment, a consumer whose card information was compromised could typically cancel the card and resolve the issue. Programmatic payments introduce a more complex challenge because transactions may be authorized through automated systems, predefined rules, or software agents acting on a user’s behalf. “You’ve got an infrastructure where we’re enabling 40 or 50 different vendors to connect and automate things out of your account,” said Holland. “Do we want to use that large hammer to crack a very small nut that one of those 50 vendors is nefariously overcharging you? We’re probably going to be in a situation where there’s a bit of a human learning curve to go through.” The behavior of AI models differs from the human behavior that fraud detection systems have traditionally been designed to monitor. Those systems will need to learn what normal activity looks like in a world increasingly driven by machine-initiated transactions. “You have to figure out what the agents are going to do,” said Wester. “The agents aren’t necessarily going to behave in ways that we think are sort of logical or the right way. They’re going to follow patterns that are recognized and all sorts of data and decisions.” The results of these efforts also need to be auditable. Regulators must be confident that automated decisions are being made in appropriate, transparent, and accountable ways. What are the implications when AI doesn’t behave as intended? “I’ve run out of toilet tissue twice in the last three weeks,” said Holland. “When I ask the AI agent to order me some new toilet roll from Amazon, it’s ordered me 500 rolls because it tries to be smart. It taken it quite literally that I run out too quick.” Key Takeaways Since programmatic payments occur in real time, the tools that support them must operate in real time as well. Whether it’s fraud screening or the onboarding of a newly introduced third-party agent, these capabilities must function at the same speed and scale as the business processes they support. It’s also vital to understand the underlying data involved and ensure it’s accurate, reliable, and aligned with the organization’s objectives. “When you take a look at some of the studies that have been done about major corporate AI roll outs, a lot of the time, it’s not that the AI was bad, or that the ultimate business aim was bad,” said Holland. “It’s the data that went into it wasn’t sufficient to give them the outcome they needed.” Finally, there is a human element to consider. Programmatic payment systems will not operate at their full potential without people who can oversee their performance, provide guidance, and step in when human judgement is required. “If you’re finding the desired success, you can bring in the people to be able to support it, so you’re not trying to play catch up or having a number of regulatory findings as your examiners come in for the first for the first time,” Ostrowski said.   Holland added: “You want to avoid the AI equivalent of throwing a spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.”
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  When Payment Choice Becomes the Expectation 30.07.2026 21m

  No one likes waiting for a check to arrive in the mail. Today’s consumers are accustomed to instant, digital experiences, and those expectations extend to payments. Whether they’re receiving a refund, reimbursement, or settlement, recipients expect fast, secure and flexible options. That shift is prompting organizations to rethink how they disburse funds, with prepaid cards emerging as a practical option for many use cases. By giving payees more direct ways to receive their money, organizations can reduce reliance on paper checks while improving access to funds for recipients. In a PaymentsJournal Podcast, U.S. Bank’s Ashley Downey, Treasury and Payment Solutions Senior Product Manager and Kristin Ridgway, Prepaid Payment Solutions Consultant, as well as Jordan Hirschfield, Director of Prepaid at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed how modern payment hubs can help organizations reduce costs, improve security, and provide recipients with greater choice. By moving payments away from paper checks and toward prepaid cards, payors can simplify disbursements while improving the payment experience. Moving Away from Checks Despite the continued shift toward digital payments, many companies still reflexively turn to paper checks for disbursements. Paper checks remain an expensive and inefficient payment method. The cost per check can exceed $4, with some estimates reaching as high as $20. “Think about all that goes into printing checks—the postage, labor, manual approvals, stuffing envelopes, tracking lost mail,” said Ridgway. “Probably the most time-consuming and expensive is check fraud. As they move those payments to prepaid cards or other pay methods, all those issues are eliminated, especially the fraud.” Checks have become less convenient for payees as well. Consumers expect speed and convenience in nearly every aspect of their lives, making a trip to the mailbox and a stop at a check-cashing location feel outdated—especially when additional fees may be involved. Fortunately, organizations have a growing range of alternatives to paper checks, including prepaid cards, payroll cards, digital payments, and even peer-to-peer services like Zelle. “All of these things are part of the arsenal every recipient uses, and they need to get those funds where they need it and as quickly as they can,” said Downey. “Having that access is key to consumers’ ability to take hold of their own personal finances.” The Benefits of Prepaid For recipients who may not have a traditional bank account—or simply want immediate access to their funds—prepaid cards can offer a practical alternative to paper checks. “Why do people use prepaid cards for themselves?” said Hirschfield. “People feel like it’s a safer option versus checks or cash. But it also turns immediately into the ability to access the money. It’s much easier to use a card on an open loop rail, especially when you’re under banked, when you have poor credit and don’t qualify for a credit card.” There’s also compliance consideration. Uncashed checks must be tracked, reported, and remitted to the state, creating additional administrative burden and audit exposure. “When a payment is made to a prepaid card, we handle statement responsibility according to the state where the recipient resides,” said Ridgway. “We take that burden away from our clients when the payment is made to a prepaid card.” A Focus on Flexibility In most cases, payee preferences and payment use cases help determine the optimal payment method. What U.S. Bank has found works well for its clients is conducting an assessment of who they’re paying and why they’re making those payments. There may be situations where funds are urgently needed, such as providing food or services to victims of a natural disaster. Or a business might have a vendor on-site who needs payment in hand before leaving. The ways those individuals prefer to receive payment could be very different—and critical to their missions. Increasingly, customers are demanding not just faster payment methods but also more payment options. The challenge for many organizations is that they may not be prepared for that level of complexity. One emerging solution is a single disbursement platform connected to multiple services and tools, such as U.S. Bank’s Payee Choice. A decision engine can process each payment and determine the ideal outcome for both the payor and the recipient. “We simplify the process so the end recipient doesn’t have to fully know or understand all the options available to them,” said Downey. “We use what information we receive from the client to best identify what solutions or payment methods best fit that recipient. “A good example of that is Zelle,” she said. “We can identify if a person is already enrolled in the Zelle network using the aliases provided by the client. And we can suppress showing that option to individuals who aren’t already enrolled. If they are enrolled in Zelle, click this button, you’ll get the payment in minutes. That’s just a better experience.” Protection from Fraud As organizations evaluate their payment mix, security has become just as important as efficiency and consumer preference. Fraud continues to be a major concern in the payments space, with paper checks remaining a primary target for criminals. Providing alternative payment options can help reduce that exposure while giving recipients greater choice. “Any type of electronic and card payment gives a much deeper programmatic fraud management solution,” said Hirschfield. “There are many more steps needed to protect these programs.” Having multiple layers of fraud prevention built into the process minimizes the need for organizations to collect and store sensitive data, thereby reducing their exposure and risk. Payee Choice continuously monitors for fraudulent activity. “We’re validating that person is the rightful owner of the account that’s being linked for payment for ACH or an instant payment, for example,” said Downey. “For Zelle, we can do a name match as well. And we’re making sure we’re preventing any misguided payments.” Final Thoughts Paper checks are becoming increasingly disconnected from how recipients actually want to be paid today—particularly among younger consumers who have never used them.   “We live in this digitally-native society—especially younger generations,” said Hirschfield. “Having these options to have any kind of digital payment or electronic payment is critical.” Offering payment choice helps close that gap, reducing friction for recipients and operational complexity for organizations.   “It’s been really powerful to have our customers move away from issuing checks and manual processes to be freed up to work on other things at their business,” said Downey. “Helping those clients move from just thinking about a payment solution and being able to drive overall improvement for them has been really successful.”
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  Why Crypto Will Be the New Standard for Global Payouts 29.07.2026 18m

  Many companies expect gig workers to deliver fast, reliable work—but the way they’re paid often tells a very different story. Behind the scenes, payouts can lag days or even weeks, get chipped away by fees, and disappear into layers of currency conversion and compliance hurdles that most contractors never see coming. This gap between real-time work and delayed compensation becomes even more pronounced in cross-border payments, where long-standing friction points persist: settlement delays, hidden costs, currency conversion, regional regulations, and limited visibility into where money actually is at any given moment. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Kate Lifshits, CEO of NOWPayments, and James Wester, Director of Cryptocurrency at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed the many ways in which leveraging digital assets for payouts can create a more effective solution. Not only can crypto payouts address operational challenges, but implementing efficient global payout systems can also be a key differentiator when it comes to attracting and retaining vital talent in a competitive market. The Operational Pain Points The issues with cross-border payments only intensify as organizations scale high-volume international payouts. Although cost is often the most visible concern, many of these expenses are not immediately obvious. “It’s not the payout itself that costs a lot, it’s the operational overhead that comes with this payout,” Lifshits said. “There are things like reconciliation, operational failures, and support tickets that come with failed payouts, and all kinds of manual operations are needed. If we’re talking about 100 payouts, it’s one fee. If we’re talking about 100,000 payouts, it’s another fee because at scale we’re talking about additional infrastructure.” Understanding fee structures is just one aspect of the broader operational complexity facing finance teams at global organizations. These teams must manage multiple banks and fiat currencies while continuously staying current on regional regulatory, tax, and compliance requirements. While this is challenging for organizations, payout inefficiencies can be even more detrimental for contractors. One of the biggest obstacles for small businesses—and especially freelancers, creators, and gig workers—is cash flow. Budgets are often stretched thin after covering supplies or subcontractors, and financial pressure can rapidly escalate when payouts are delayed, inaccurate, or subsumed by fees. Unfortunately, all of these issues are common in the current payment system. “The system itself was built by banks for banks, for their convenience and not for either end of the transaction,” Wester said. “It’s not built for the sender. Tthe sender has to figure out the complexity, they have to figure out where it’s going, and they have to figure out the cost. And the recipient, it’s definitely not designed for them because they have to wait. They are the ones where often the fees are built into whatever it is that they received.” Translating Speed into Trust These payment challenges don’t align with current customer expectations. When users can send peer-to-peer payments almost instantly with full visibility in a seamless digital experience, traditional cross-border payment systems can feel archaic. “They want settlement and they’re even beginning to understand the differences between when a payment is made and when a payment settles,” Wester said. “They are expecting that settlement to be immediate. Nobody wants to wait for a payment to clear anymore, you don’t want to hear that phrase. You just expect a payment to happen and the money to move and for it to be available in an account right away.” For their part, many organizations want similar clarity on the other side of the transaction, since understanding cash flow is essential to operations. However, the complexity of cross-border payments—combined with managing multiple platforms, freelancers, and contractors—makes it difficult to track cash flow accurately. This creates a difficult environment, because organizations that rely on gig workers and contractors at scale understand that speedy, reliable payouts are the lifeblood of their business model. “In this case, speed translates into trust and reputation and that in its turn translates into bigger volumes, because speed means that the users will trust this provider or this business—whichever is sending the payouts—and that in its turn will bring in more usage,” Lifshits said. “It all goes together.” Improving the Economics of Global Payouts As merchants increasingly recognize the importance of efficient payouts, many also acknowledge that current cross-border payment systems fall short of expectations. Digital assets can provide near real-time payment and greater transparency, while often reducing currency conversion friction and regulatory overhead. Perhaps most importantly, crypto payments can help reduce the spiraling costs of global payouts. “It’s different with crypto payment gateways because they can help scale without ballooning the fees. The fees stay the same even with a big scaling,” Lifshits said. “All the pain points could be dealt with in this traditional infrastructure, but it will cost very, very much. But if it’s a crypto payout infrastructure, the fees will be what they are supposed to be in a world that makes sense.” At the center of this infrastructure is the crypto gateway, which bridges payments processors and merchants. While early crypto gateways were little more than a “Pay with Crypto” button at checkout, modern systems have evolved into sophisticated payment orchestration platforms that optimize routing while maintaining compliance. Crypto gateways have become essential for managing the many components of the digital asset ecosystem, including cryptocurrencies, wallets, integrations, and infrastructure layers. This is transformative for organizations that are drawn to the cost and efficiency benefits of digital assets but hesitant about operational complexity. These gateways also address one of the most significant barriers to adoption: volatility. Crypto gateways allow merchants to choose how actively they manage digital assets, from fully automated conversion to more hands-on control. All these advantages make crypto payouts as user-friendly as other payment tools in a merchant’s stack. “Crypto is not something now that a business needs to look at and think that is different from the standard way of doing things,” Wester said. “It has become a standard for business-to-business payments, and it is not something that is strange or foreign or weird or exotic. It’s a standard tool for making payments and has become so very quickly.” Changing Business Economics Crypto has been adopted rapidly in part because it often offers a more efficient alternative to many traditional payment methods. However, the benefits of using digital assets for payouts extend beyond cost reduction. “If you think about gig economy marketplaces or about any time there has to be a payout, when you think about making that payment better, faster, and cheaper, it becomes something that those businesses can now use as a competitive advantage,” Wester said. While crypto gateways are powerful tools, they were not entirely fee-free—until now. NOWPayments recently introduced zero-fee payouts with near-instant processing for wallets within its ecosystem. This solution is designed for high-volume global operations and delivers meaningful improvements in efficiency and scalability. Beyond reducing costs, NOWPayments introduces a new value proposition for partners: the ability to generate additional revenue when their users engage with ChangeNOW PRO. This makes NOWPayments the first crypto payment gateway to enable partners not only to accept payments, but also to participate in and benefit from the broader ecosystem. Along with settlement times of roughly a second, zero-fee payouts and new revenue opportunities present a compelling alternative—even compared to already low-cost crypto gateways. “The problem here is that every fee looks small until you scale it and multiply it by millions or billions of transactions,” Lifshits said. “The small businesses that are scaling to become big businesses, they will face issues even if the fee is $0.01.” “That is why our zero-fee instant payouts are meant to change business economics, because they’re free, they are available to everyone, and they’re instant. And that means lower operational costs and a far better user experience,” she said. “It’s not even about reducing costs or saving money; it’s about enabling new business models and new revenue streams.”
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  What Happens When a Credit Union Outgrows Its Accounting System 28.07.2026 16m

  As financial institutions merge and evolve, the pressure on back-office operations grows just as quickly as it does on member-facing services. Accounting teams that once relied on manual processes and patchwork systems are now expected to deliver greater accuracy, faster reporting, and the flexibility to support future growth. As a result, many banks and credit unions are reevaluating whether their current accounting platforms can keep pace—and looking for partners that can support both today’s demands and tomorrow’s challenges. In a PaymentsJournal Podcast, Kellie Rychwalski, Chief Financial Officer at Del-One Federal Credit Union, Kandra Person, Senior Solution Consultant at Fiserv, and James Wester, Co-Head of Payments at Javelin Research and Strategy, discussed the accounting solutions available to financial teams today. Newer platforms have made significant advances compared to the way things were handled in the past. “I was just looking for efficiencies,” said Rychwalski. “Simply being able to attach a PDF of an invoice to an accounts payable or fixed asset transaction instead of filing is a huge time saver.”   Seeking a Platform with Greater Functionality When Rychwalski joined Del One in 2012 as the Director of Accounting, she found an integrated general ledger (GL) system that lacked much of the functionality the credit union needed. “We were looking for something that was core agnostic,” said Rychwalski. “We knew that we would be changing data processors or core systems at some point, and didn’t want to have to continuously move the GL.” Del-One eventually selected Fiserv’s financial accounting and finance operations platform, Prologue, in a hosted environment. The credit union would receive full support from Fiserv, and if they changed core systems in the future, they wouldn’t need to replace the entire GL again. When the credit union merged with Louviers Federal Credit Union and migrated its GL into Prologue, the transition was easy for the team to absorb. From day one, they were able to produce consolidated financials without waiting for the operational merge date. “We could still balance to the different core processors of their different outside vendors, but we could bring our financial statements together as one consolidated financial statement,” Rychwalski said. “For the person who spent two months manually combining them, that was a really big deal.” Streamlining Approvals The sheer volume of AP that flows through a thriving credit union can be daunting. Prologue helps alleviate the burden by assigning approval limits, connecting the appropriate invoices to each transaction, and routing everything through the approval workflow automatically. It eliminates the need for staff to chase down approvals manually. “The system knows that anything over $100,000 has to go to my supervisor, so it’ll come and get my approval and then it’ll send it over to my supervisor,” Rychwalski said. “Nobody is running around trying to make sure they got all the signatures, and the actual transaction has the invoice and approval history attached to it.” Prologue allows Del-One to establish policy limits that determine who can approve transactions and at what amounts. If an amount requires a second approval, the workflow automatically routes it to the appropriate person. Instead of tracking down signatures on paper invoices, approvals are connected digitally from the start. “Many of the prior processes were ad hoc processes that solved the problem when they were first developed, then they just became standard operating procedures,” said Wester. “Having a system that can automate that and make people more efficient gives you more time to do other things that are more important to the business.” Moving Beyond a Patchwork System Many legacy systems exist only in the minds of long-time employees. Rychwalski explained that previous budgets were prepared through an elaborate network of spreadsheets—a process that was not only unsustainable, but also difficult to transfer to others. “I needed something that would calculate interest income and expense that would allow me to project based on rates,” Rychwalski said. “And that’s what Vantage brought to us. I’m able to project that if the rates go up, this is the way it’s going to look. I can build formulas.” The previous spreadsheet process consumed a tremendous amount of time, both in maintaining the files and in training others. It also created accuracy issues, since manual processes inevitably introduce human error. “The accuracy also increases because Vantage brings in the account level detail, the instrument level detail from those cores,” Person said. “With it being core agnostic, it’s bringing in all that detail to calculate all the cash flows for those specific investments, loans, shares, and deposits.” Ready for the Future Organizations investing time and money into these products must understand that proper mapping is critical. Teams need to understand how the GL is structured, what accounts are grouped together, and how to maintain consistency while still leaving room for future changes and growth. “You’re going to create products that you haven’t thought about yet,” said Rychwalski. “You have to be able to understand how to update new products, create new products, and change the ones that you have.”
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  The Missing Piece in Banks’ Identity Protection Strategy 24.07.2026 21m

  Every bank wants to earn its customers’ trust. Today, protecting customers’ identities is just as important to earning that trust as safeguarding their money. Too many financial institutions, however, still treat identity protection as an afterthought. They fail to recognize that identity protection is not only a cybersecurity imperative but also a powerful driver of customer loyalty and engagement. In a PaymentsJournal Podcast, Javelin Strategy & Research’s Tracy Goldberg, Director of Cybersecurity, and Dylan Lerner, Senior Analyst of Digital Banking, discussed the opportunity for banks and credit unions to offering identity protection services to customers and members. While these services deliver clear security benefits, financial institutions should also consider the risks of leaving customers vulnerable to identity-based attacks. As the saying goes, trust arrives on foot but leaves on horseback. Seeking Security Identity theft remains a widespread problem. Consumers are increasingly looking to trusted partners to help them navigate identity theft risk, creating an opportunity for banks and credit unions to partner with identity theft protection services (IDPS) providers. “There’s so many different ways to look at this, but at the end, it comes down to the fact that you should do anything you can to tell your customers, ‘Hey, security is important to us too,’” said Lerner. “Then all those ancillary benefits come into play.” Banks and credit unions are uniquely positioned to help consumers recover from identity theft. Not only do they safeguard much of a customer’s or member’s financial assets, but banks and credit unions also carry a reputation for stability and trustworthiness. “Cybersecurity generally is never thought of as a customer service or loyalty topic,” said Goldberg. “But consumers are telling us that when it comes to a cybersecurity incident—whether it’s a socially engineered attack like a scam or even malware that may have infected their device—they more often than not want to turn to a trusted partner like a financial institution.” Not every institution has the resources to build a comprehensive cybersecurity program that includes identity theft resources in-house. As a result, many turning to white-label IDPS solutions that provide identity protection under the financial institution’s brand. “I want the IDPS to be with my name and my branding, to not only build credibility but loyalty,” Lerner said. “There is something to be said about having a strong brand name associated with it.” At the same time, there are advantages to partnering with a third-party provider that brings strong brand recognition and established expertise. The key is selecting a solution that best aligns with the financial institution’s overall strategy and customer experience goals. Making It Accessible An effective IDPS strategy should enhance, not complicate, the customer/member relationship. Prioritizing sophisticated technology at the expense of accessibility can ultimately undermine adoption and engagement. “The most important thing in banking relationships is ease of use,” said Lerner. “Security is always second to being able to use something.” There is risk in relying too heavily on generic educational messaging. When consumers are inundated with scam alerts and warnings, they often start to tune them out. Financial institutions should leverage their own data to personalize communications and tailor recommendations to individual needs. Just as importantly, every alert should include clear, actionable guidance on what customers can do next. “So often when we look at the top 20 financial institutions, one of the missing key elements in education is making it actionable,” said Lerner. “That’s what a lot of these identity protection services provide. Rather than an identity theft kit that says, ‘Contact each of the three bureaus,’ provide a trusted provider that can help with the next step. That actionability is a big upgrade over education.” Ultimately, identity protection works best as a partnership between the customer/member and the financial institution. That collaborative approach strengthens trust and builds longer-lasting relationships. “If consumers find that identity theft protection adds value, you might find that your customers either add more products or stay with your financial institution longer,” said Goldberg. “That ancillary benefit is now available to them beyond just offering basic banking products and services that are pretty commoditized in today’s market.” Customize the Offering Financial institutions can bolster those relationships by ensuring that identity protection and other security offerings are customized. For instance, seniors may benefit from features designed for caregivers or family financial management. Other consumers with young children may have more interest in identity monitoring that includes the entire family. Different consumer segments face different risks, giving financial institutions an opportunity to deliver more relevant, personalized security solutions. “This just goes to show me that the financial institution has the consumer’s best interest at heart,” Goldberg said. “They are helping me to shore up my cybersecurity, not only within my bank account, but also in my personal life.” Financial institutions don’t have to be the experts in every aspect of identity protection. A well-chosen IDPS partner understands where consumers are most vulnerable and can identify when consumers need additional safeguards, enhanced monitoring, or offering hands-on support during identity recovery. “The more secure your customers and members are, from a cybersecurity standpoint, in their personal lives, the more secure their accounts are going to be,” said Goldberg. “And the less risk you’re going to see as a financial institution.”
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  The Case for Not Building Your Own Remittance Stack 22.07.2026 20m

  Entrepreneurs bring tremendous enthusiasm and energy to building their businesses, but they’re often less excited about the everyday—yet essential—tasks like building the infrastructure needed to accept and send payments. When they do tackle those tasks, they usually discover they’re far more complicated than expected. That’s why more startups are turning to outside partners to help them build remittance platforms. In a PaymentsJournal Podcast, Avinash Chidambaram, Founder and CEO of Cybrid and James Wester, Co-Head of Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed how these partners can help growing businesses with everything from compliance to building payment applications. Complications Abound There’s much more to a remittance platform than simply collecting payments. Building one typically requires significant and expensive developer resources, particularly in early-stage startups and expanding fintechs without existing systems. Challenges include onboarding, Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements, compliance, and other features that can affect or delay a launch. Further, these requirements vary depending on the business, so it’s difficult to copy a playbook across an industry. Sending stablecoins across borders, for instance, presents fraud and KYC challenges that are very different from those facing a local hardware store or even a domestic-only bill pay platform. The challenges of sending and receiving payments across borders are already complex, and they are made worse by the fact that companies must adhere to the unique compliance requirements in every jurisdiction involved.  A startup that has found customers halfway around the world has enough on its plate without also navigating the complexities of remittance infrastructure in every market where it operates. “What surprises people when they start looking at remittances or cross-border [transfers] is that all the complexities that you have in payments in one market are now multiplied for every market that you’re trying to go into,” said Chidambaram. “You have to think about all of those rules, all of those regulations, all of the requirements, all the compliance things across every different corridor.” Rather than outsourcing to a service provider, which can get expensive, a key unlock is to work with technology vendors that handle the compliance posture on your behalf. Not only can experienced partners take the burden off a business’ shoulders, but they can also manage these issues more efficiently and cost-effectively. “Go do the stuff that you do well, go build your business,” said Wester. “You don’t need to be paying attention to the regulatory happenings in a particular jurisdiction that you may be dealing in or sending monies to. Let somebody else do that because that’s the part where it’s changing.” Solving the Same Problems Despite operating in different markets, remittance and B2B companies face similar challenges. For instance, both require significant data collection on users, called KYC for individuals or KYB for businesses. This data is necessary for compliance reasons, but handling sensitive personal information is also a risk to individual businesses. Again, this is where a technology vendor can help; pre-built APIs make this data collection easier and more secure, with fewer developer resources required. Given the rapid pace of change in payments, organizations must continually adapt to new requirements. Speed, in particular, has become ever more important in B2B payments as suppliers have come to expect real-time transactions whenever possible. And in today’s global economy, payments now move through a 24/7 cycle. Consider a company purchasing goods from China. It must manage everything from payment timing to constantly fluctuating foreign exchange rates. Rather than manage all of that internally, many organizations find it easier to rely on partners that have already solved these challenges. “We realized we’re already helping other customers make payments to China,” said Chidambaram. “So why wouldn’t we take that information and bundle it all together? The network effect isn’t just having more endpoints. It’s also experiencing all those pain points, learning from everybody else’s experience, because I think generally that’s going to be good for all of us. The rising tide will lift all boats.” Drawbacks of Infrastructure Vendors Of course, not every outside partner offers the same level of support. Many businesses turn to infrastructure vendors to power money movement. The challenge is that these providers typically focus on the underlying technology, leaving implementation and the front-end user experience to the client. “It’s pretty straightforward to get the basics in place,” said Chidambaram. “But it doesn’t necessarily directly fit the setup for a particular jurisdiction, and it doesn’t necessarily meet the strict compliance requirements and standards in the jurisdictions that we operate in.” Some organizations have relied on open-source repositories or the growing array of AI tools. While both can provide the basic building blocks, they often fall short as businesses scale and their requirements become more sophisticated.  Another issue is fraud and risk considerations, which can require reserve funding. “If there’s money lost [due to fraud], we’re just going to take it from [reserve funds],” said Chidambaram. “It’s an actual direct cost to those entrepreneurs and to those companies because they don’t have anyone helping them manage any of that risk.” Final Takeaways The core message for any organization developing an international remittance or B2B payments platform is to find a partner that approaches the challenge holistically, freeing the business to focus on growth. The right partner can manage capabilities that may not initially seem like competitive differentiators, such as liquidity management and 24/7/365 money movement. The most optimal B2B payment platforms deliver a stronger, more seamless payment experience for everyone who uses their applications. Given the size and complexity of many B2B payments, every aspect of the transaction has become increasingly important. Similarly, the best remittance platforms automate the necessary things that don’t provide competitive differentiation, like KYC collection, but prioritize their developer time on building market-leading user experiences. “The devil is in the details,” said Wester. “The messy stuff may be that 10% that you didn’t know you needed to pay attention to. You got 90% of the way there, but it was the 10% that you missed that will get you fined or will get you shut down or will lose a partner.” Chidambaram added: “We’ve made it easy for you to go beyond the core infrastructure of minting a stablecoin and sending it to a wallet. We are empowering entrepreneurs so that they don’t have to worry about the payment side of it anymore. My advice is if you are an entrepreneur or a startup and your business is do not do payments, go do the thing that you do.”
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  When Faster Isn’t Better: The New Rules of Business Payments 21.07.2026 15m

  Business customers today have more ways to move money than at any point in recent memory. The arrival of near-instant payment networks like FedNow and RTP has expanded the menu of options, giving companies new ways to balance speed, cost, and security when making payments. In a PaymentsJournal Podcast, Darren Beyer, Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder of Qolo, and Hugh Thomas, Lead Analyst of Commercial and Enterprise Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed how the business payments landscape has evolved. While faster payments have captured much of the industry’s attention, they noted that speed is only one consideration. In many cases, choosing the right payment method has become a more nuanced decision. A Panoply of Options According to Javelin's 2026 Commercial Payments Factbook, one of the most notable developments in business payments is that virtually every alternative to paper checks is growing at the same time—a dynamic the industry hasn’t seen before. The payment method companies choose depends on the circumstances surrounding the transaction. When funds need to move immediately and both parties want real-time visibility into the transfer, businesses often gravitate toward RTP. In newer supplier relationships, where trust may still be developing, virtual cards are frequently the preferred option, particularly when buyers and suppliers are looking for working capital or cash management benefits. ACH remains a mainstay for established business relationships. Companies that have worked together for years often rely on ACH because the process is familiar, automated, and dependable. Whether using standard ACH or Same Day ACH, many businesses continue to view it as a simple and efficient way to move funds. The banking ecosystem has also split across newer instant payment networks. While many large financial institutions helped build and adopt The Clearing House’s RTP network, smaller banks have generally shown greater interest in the Federal Reserve’s FedNow service. “The problem is that while both of those are real time networks, they don't talk to each other,” said Beyer. “If you're a bank that does FedNow, you can't accept an RTP for one of your banking clients. The best way that gets solved is by both of those reaching a critical mass of acceptance on the banking side. Until that problem gets solved, those are going to continue to be throttled.” Beyond Speed The conversation around faster payments has been building for more than a decade. Since the Federal Reserve first outlined its vision for modernizing payments, financial institutions and technology providers have invested heavily to expand available options. Now that those systems are reaching greater maturity, the focus is shifting. The challenge is no longer about enabling faster payments, it’s helping businesses understand when speed matters—and when it doesn’t. For many, delaying a payment can be advantageous. A company issuing large volumes of payments may prefer to preserve cash for a few extra days. In other situations, speed can be critical, such as when paying a six-figure supplier invoice and avoiding costly late fees. “If you were to ask 100 CFOs of varying size companies about RTP or FedNow, they might say, that's kind of like a real-time ACH or something, isn't it?” said Beyer. “That's their level of understanding of what it is. Once you understand what something is, you can think about how are you going to use these things.” “Your CFO may realize, OK, I know what RTP is, now I can hang on to my funds till the absolute last moment and then push them out in my contractual obligation to pay a payee. All that becomes more material to the CFO. That cascades down through the organization in working with providers to better understand the mandates the CFOs push in terms of hitting those cash conversion cycle goals.” By and large, it’s less about choosing a single payment rail and more about applying rules-based decision-making. Today, more businesses have the ability to route payments based on factors such as timing, cost, and the nature of the relationship between counterparties. “Bank of America recently had a webinar about their use of RTP for home closing costs,” said Thomas. “I don't know that 10 years ago you would have seen a bank talking about this. But the folks involved in the ecosystem understand there's a need for broader education in terms of how all these various different instruments get used.” Matching the Tool to the Task Each payment method offers its own balance of convenience, control, and risk. Checks, despite their declining share of payments, still provide a level of flexibility. They may take longer to arrive, but senders can stop payment if something goes wrong. Electronic payment methods come with their own safeguards. Card-based payments, including virtual cards, offer dispute and chargeback protections. ACH transactions also provide mechanisms for addressing unauthorized activity. The trade-off becomes more pronounced with real-time payments. The same speed that makes these networks attractive can also create challenges when fraud occurs. Once funds have been sent and received, recovering them can be far more difficult. That reality reinforces a central point, according to both Beyer and Thomas. No single payment method is right for every situation. Each fills a distinct role, and the optimal choice depends on the context and the payer’s goals. “All the hard technical stuff is done,” Beyer said. “We've built all the piping, but now we need to help customers understand how best to orchestrate this. Banks have to catch up, they're not going to go spend a bunch of money if they can't monetize it.” “The rest of the world has to now do the hard part of coming up with the use cases, rules-based routing, all of those different things. It's the old adage that it takes 90% of the work to do the final 10%. That's where we're sitting right now with RTP and FedNow. We collectively have to get that last 10% across the line.”
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  For Gen Z, Banking Loyalty Begins with Payments 20.07.2026

  Banking relationships often start earlier than most people realize—and they tend to last longer than expected. Roughly half of young consumers will stick with their bank into adulthood, and many never switch. This puts banks’ focus squarely on Gen Z, where the youngest members of the cohort are in their early teenage years and the oldest are already facing significant financial decisions. Still, many financial institutions have struggled to connect with this digital-first demographic. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Fiserv’s Tina Shirley, VP of Product Management and Josh Mesaros, Inside Sales Executive, as well as Ben Danner, Senior Debit Analyst at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed payments experiences across generational lines and the areas where banks fall short. What they uncovered was that when financial institutions improve payment experiences to better engage Gen Z, they also positively impact consumers across the board. The Gamut of Mobile Banking Experiences For most consumers, the best mobile experience isn’t the flashiest one—it’s the one that works seamlessly every time. While many banks focus on creating sleek new user interfaces, customers’ highest expectation for online and mobile banking apps is simply that they work—especially for everyday interactions like viewing checking account balances and reviewing credit card transactions. Over the years, many of these features have become taken for granted, but they represent a significant improvement over are far superior to the alternative. “I think back to when online bill pay was new for me, it was kind of a life-changing offering,” Shirley said. “Rather than writing a check and having to go get stamps and remember to mail a check, moving to online bill pay changed my routine from being annoying and inconvenient to just a couple of clicks to pay my bill.” Although many mobile banking activities have become ingrained behaviors, new technologies have driven significant shifts in other areas. This is especially true for Gen Z and millennial consumers. “The biggest one for me would be Zelle®,” Mesanos said. “I live with a bunch of buddies and every month I have my payment set and scheduled where on the first of the month I pay my roommate, who then pays all of our rent to our landlord at once. It is also very convenient when going out to dinner and for my yearly dues to my hockey team. Zelle®'s just a must have for me.” The Fragmentation of Financial Apps Although Zelle® is a powerful tool, there is no monopoly in fintech—a reality that underscores one of the biggest challenges facing banks and credit unions as they compete for relevance among Gen Z. The market is now crowded with digitally native fintechs and neobanks, many of which have made early inroads with users. While many of the companies were created to addresses specific banking niches, several fintechs have since expanded their offerings to rival traditional banks. Companies like Venmo and Cash App can accept deposits, facilitate investments, and issue debit cards. However, while these services may be bank-like, they are not equivalent to full-service banking offerings. “Some of these third-party payment platforms—for example, Venmo—are not insured,” Mesanos said. “I once had a buddy in college that had a bunch of money sitting in his Venmo account because he didn't want his parents to access that and see how much he had. But that not being insured scares me because you never know what's going to happen.” Another issue with fintechs is that many operate as walled gardens, where users must join a platform to participate in its ecosystem. To accommodate these varied scenarios, customers often download multiple apps. This can quickly lead to financial fragmentation, where users hold balances across several platforms with no holistic way to manage them. “You might have a Gen Z customer bouncing around between all these different fintech apps and multiple banking apps, to the point where they have 10 to 15 apps on their phone that are just for banking and payments,” Danner said. “One single app that can do all of those different things would be huge because there is app fatigue in a way,” he said. Unifying the Banking Experience As consumers increasingly juggle multiple financial apps, banks have an opportunity to differentiate themselves by becoming the central hub for user’s financial lives. Unfortunately, many banks and credit unions are still behind the curve on the fundamentals. “I've banked with several small banks and credit unions that didn't have a whole lot of features built into their mobile experience,” Danner said. “When we talk about these things that are table stakes at the large issuer—like budget tools, spend management controls, instant everything—some of the smaller banks and credit unions I've been with don't have any of those tools in their app.” This lack of scope and functionality further contributes to fragmentation, as users often must rely on multiple apps to accomplish a single objective. Integrating these experiences is a critical first step, but an attractive mobile banking solution goes far beyond functionality alone. Perhaps more than any other generation, Gen Z consumers are accustomed to optionality. Instead of cable or satellite, they expect to curate their own mix of streaming services from a collection of options. However, this abundance of choice can also be overwhelming. As a result, many younger adults place a premium on guidance, especially when it comes to major life decisions. Unfortunately, too many banks still rely on one-size-fits-all messaging for a generation that expects tailored experiences. “I’m getting retirement notifications or notifications like, ‘Here is a $400 promo to open a small business account,’” Mesanos said. “It would be helpful if there was a ‘For You’ category where I could learn about mortgages or car loans, something that's more relevant to my generation.” Personalizing Offers Via AI Banks now have more tools than ever to deliver personalized guidance at scale—and Gen Z consumers increasingly expect that level of customization. Institutions have substantial access to consumer data through onboarding information, transaction history, and product interactions. They also have artificial intelligence and other customization tools at their disposal, which can generate personalized recommendations with minimal staff involvement. These tools can be deployed at critical moments, while the customer is actively engaged with the bank’s app. Unfortunately, many banks and credit unions have continued to operate as usual—and the limitations are becoming increasingly apparent. “Truth be told, I don't feel much pain, but I do feel like my bank is serving up the same experience that it did 10 years ago, or more,” Shirley said. “My journey has changed; my bank still has tools that are relevant, but maybe in a different way than they used to be. It's continuing to invest in the technology that enables the experience that customers or members expect.” The Winning Combination for Gen Z For younger consumers navigating fragmented financial lives, the institutions gaining traction are often the ones that can simplify the experience while still making it feel personal. This blend of personalization, education, and AI has resonated strongly with younger adults. A centralized banking experience can cut through the noise for a generation inundated with financial advice from social media and accustomed to managing money across multiple banks and fintech platforms. However, becoming a central hub doesn’t mean a financial institution must be the sole provider of services. In many cases, consumers place greater value on institutions that can provide a holistic view of their financial lives, regardless of where their accounts or balances reside. That broader experience must be paired with functionality, which is why Zelle® has become such an important component of financial institutions’ payments stacks. The service offers a near real-time, low cost, and secure way to send payments that feel familiar and intuitive to Gen Z customers. As Zelle® approaches its tenth anniversary next year, some corners of the market have suggested the payments solution could begin to show its age—but the opposite may be true. “In my opinion, it is the right network enabling instant payments,” Shirley said. “Here at Fiserv, we are bringing things forward like allowing recurring payments and scheduled one-time payments. The user sees their recent recipients so they can easily transact, and they aren’t having to dig into a long list to figure out who to pay.” “There are things that we’re able to do and we’ll keep moving forward with from a user experience perspective, I’m looking forward to seeing what the next 10 years will bring,” she said.
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  Tap-to-Pay Gives Small Merchants a Big Advantage 14.07.2026 11m

  A decade ago, accepting card payments at a farmers market, food truck, or pop-up shop often meant investing in bulky hardware, worrying about battery life, and paying for ongoing technical support. Today, a small business owner can accept secure, contactless payments with nothing more than a smartphone. Tap-to-pay is doing more than speeding up checkout for consumers—it’s lowering the barriers to commerce for micro merchant, giving them access to affordable payment technology, customer insights, and enterprise-level security once reserved for much larger businesses. In a PaymentsJournal Podcast, Sara Craven, General Manager at Visa’s Authorize.net, and Don Apgar, Director of Merchant Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, explored what micro merchants can gain from tap-to-pay. Despite the ease and convenience, these transactions are protected against fraud just as effectively as traditional card payments. Making It Easier on Customers Merchants used to be able to get away with accepting only certain payment methods. Today, consumers expect to pay however they want. They want to be able to tap their device—whether it's Apple Pay, Google Pay, or a credit or debit card—anytime, anywhere. Tap-to-pay allows even the smallest businesses to accept nearly every type of payment. More importantly, it helps bring more consumers through the door, which can translate into higher revenue. “I was at a lacrosse tournament with my 14-year-old,” said Craven. “They had these long lines for folks who just wanted to buy a taco and they were only accepting cash. I sat there thinking, if they had tap-to-pay, with the ability to quickly move consumers through their lines and not have to worry about the change or the dollar bills, it could have been game changing.” Apgar added: “My personal use case is leaving the Kroger the other day and the Girl Scouts had the cookie stand set up out front. I only had $20 in my pocket, so I could only buy four boxes. It was really a heartbreak. Had they had they accepted cards, I certainly would have bought many more than I needed.” Simple Yet Comprehensive There’s no need for merchants to purchase dongles or dedicated hardware to set up tap-to-pay. They simply download an app or sign up online, and they're ready to start accepting payments. From there, merchants can integrate payments into their broader customer experience. A farmers market vendor, for example, can not only accept payments but also record orders directly on their device, track customer information, and analyze purchase history. From an omnichannel perspective, this gives merchants a centralized view of their operations, including customer activity and overall business performance. “If we can't get to the farmers market one week, tap-to-pay still shows my order both from when I purchased in person and also when I purchased online,” said Craven. “It creates a really nice, connected ecosystem for merchants.” The early days of wireless payment terminals were marked by bulky hardware that resembled old cellular phones. These devices required reliable cell signals, and battery life was often a major limitation. For merchants operating in places without easy access to electricity—such as farmers markets—keeping terminals powered throughout the day was a challenge. It has also historically been difficult for acquirers and PSPs to efficiently serve micro merchants. Deploying and programing payment terminals is expensive, and ongoing tech support adds even more cost. Tap-to-pay removes much of that burden by eliminating the need for dedicated hardware altogether. “We've got tons of partners who leverage on Authorize.net,” said Craven. “They're reselling or offering our service to merchants as a streamlined approach to our products. They can also get their merchants onboarded without having to send them devices. It’s super easy for PSPs to scale in this space without the overhead of having to manage hardware deployment and support.” State-of-the-Art Fraud Controls Despite its simplicity, tap-to-pay offers the same level of security and reliability as more complex payment systems. “I joke that my mom is very nervous about using tap-to-pay because she's worried that the minute she touches her phone or her credit card to someone else's phone, they're able to steal her credentials,” said Craven. “But everything is fully encrypted. You don't see full credit card data. It has a token attached to it so that you're able to purchase again without having to enter or show your clear card data. They don't even have PIN numbers that the merchants have accessible.” Behind the scenes, advanced fraud prevention tools monitor transactions to ensure that in-person payments are being made by the authorized user, based on behavioral patterns and prior usage history associated with the card or device. Tap-to-pay is also more secure than swiping a card because payment data is encrypted instantly, and there’s no magnetic stripe involved. Consumer can feel confident that their information is protected and that transactions are secure. Much of this security is invisible to the user, but it helps create a seamless and trustworthy experience for both merchants and consumers. Final Takeaways As consumer expectations continue to shift toward faster, more flexible payment experiences, tap-to-pay is becoming less of a convenience and more of a competitive necessity for businesses of all sizes. For micro merchants in particular, the technology removes many of the traditional barriers to accepting digital payments, allowing them to operate with greater mobility, lower overhead costs, and more direct access to customer insights. As smartphones become all-in-one business tools, tap-to-pay is set to play a central role in how small businesses sell, grow, and engage with customers in the years ahead. “There are so many use cases for that today, especially when you look at the makeup of small business in the U.S.,” said Apgar. “Field services like plumbers, electricians, and real estate agents—the use cases are almost limitless.” Craven added: “It is table stakes that people expect to be able to tap their device anytime and anywhere. Then you have the age-old problem, I don't have change for a $50 when I'm at the farmers market. It's all the benefits of card payments rolled into an easily accessible platform.”
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  Modern Cyber Risk Is Breaking Longstanding Security Assumptions 13.07.2026 27m

  Modern geopolitical tensions now extend well beyond traditional statecraft. They increasingly manifest through wiper malware attacks, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against critical organizations, and coordinated disinformation and influence operations designed to shape public perception in real time. Even as active flashpoints evolve and direct confrontation fluctuates, organizations are left operating in a sustained environment of elevated cyber and systemic risk. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Teresa Walsh, CEO and Founder at Integrated Intelligence Solutions, and Tracy Goldberg, Director of Cybersecurity at Javelin Strategy  & Research, discussed how financial institutions can strengthen operational resilience and build more integrated cybersecurity strategies in response to this shifting threat landscape. Perhaps most importantly, the direction of travel is clear: public and private sector coordination is no longer optional. It’s becoming foundational to how organizations anticipate, withstand, and recover from disruption. The Changing Cyber-Risk Landscape These capabilities are increasingly critical because the cybersecurity landscape has reached an inflection point. Ongoing geopolitical volatility has pushed cyber resilience to a top priority for most organizations. Coordinated cyber-attack campaigns now often blend network intrusion, disruption, and disinformation, creating cascading impacts . “When two nations are fighting against each other, one of the things they'll always go after is your communications system and probably your energy systems as well, because they’re trying to disrupt the other guy and make their lives harder,” Walsh said. “If you're a private sector company, like a banker or some other type of company, you have to understand what you are going to do if you don't have access to the internet or if you don't have access to power to even turn your computers on,” she said. There are many documented examples of how these tactics are used in modern conflicts, including cyber attacks against critical infrastructure, large-scale malware campaigns, and disruptive events. These incidents can assume many forms. Disinformation and misinformation campaigns are especially prevalent during periods of instability, often used to create public confusion or shift narratives. There have also been cases where nation-states, directly or indirectly, leverage fraudulent activity, including account takeovers or money-mule recruitment to launder funds.  Increasingly, these operations are augmented or outsourced to third parties like hacktivist groups or cybercrime syndicates, which can operate independently or align with broader geopolitical objectives. Withstanding Disruption High impact cyber incidents have demonstrated how disruptive these types events can be . In some cases, enterprises have experienced widespread device outages, operational shutdowns, and recovery timelines extending over multiple weeks. This begs the question for all organizations, especially financial institutions: Are they prepared to withstand a 30-day disruption—whether impacting their own operations or those of a critical third-party provider? “Most of the time when we talk about disruption, even when your regulator talks about disruption, they're not talking in terms of 30 days,” Walsh said. “They're usually talking in terms of three hours or maybe a day or two. The concept of a 30-day disruption, that might completely wipe out a company, wipe out their entire profit, and wipe out their customer base and their reputation.” While such scenarios may appear unlikely, ongoing geopolitical instability and the increasing sophistication of cyber threats makes it essential for organizations to plan for extended disruption. Institutions must also look beyond their own operations. As reliance on third-party vendors grows—often across multiple jurisdictions—these relationships introduce additional systemic risk. For example, a fintech partner with significant operations in a region affected by a conflict could create downstream operational impacts for a bank. This makes it critical for financial services firms to map dependencies, identify concentration risk, and understand the complexity of their external ecosystem. “We talk so much about third-party risk, and we don't even have a handle on third parties, but no organization out there—I don't just limit it to financial institutions—has a good handle on who their fourth and fifth parties are,” Goldberg said. “As you are mapping out your enterprise and your systems and your network and all of those different entities upon which you rely, if any of those were to go down, what would the domino effect be?” she said. The Expanding Cyber Discussion Toward ‘Cyber Fusion’ Alongside external risks, internal approaches to resilience are often fragmented. One common challenge is the divide between fraud prevention and cybersecurity teams, which increasingly need to operate in close coordination. “When I started out at my first bank, my boss said that we in the cyber team have visibility that the fraud teams don't and we need to be able to share that with them,” Walsh said. “Anything that we have on the cyber side that can affect the fraud space—tell them, communicate, help them try to see how we can make it better and how we can make the bank more resistant to cybercriminals .” This collaboration becomes even more important during periods of geopolitical volatility, when cyber risk, financial crime, and fraud often converge. In these situations, policies related to know-your-customer and anti-money laundering may need to be adapted in response to changing cyber risk . Addressing these challenges requires enterprise-wide alignment and cross-functional coordination, which is becoming an important trend in modern resilience strategies. “We could even bring HR into the discussion; because we know, in addition to rogue employees, we also have individuals who are applying for positions who are just trying to infiltrate the organization,” Goldberg said. “But then you also have the socially engineered pieces ,” she said. “We know that most compromises getting into a company's network, or even data breaches, they usually come back to a phishing attack—someone was manipulated who has admin rights or access gets conned. There's a lot of ways that this cyber fusion discussion could expand.” The Role of the Private Sector Beyond internal collaboration, rising cyber threats have made cooperation between public entities and private organizations essential, particularly during periods of geopolitical instability. “We saw a wonderful example leading into the Ukraine war with Russia, where several U.S. technology companies and cybersecurity companies went in and helped them out,” Walsh said. “They helped them transfer vast amounts of information to the cloud to be able to make sure that if something did happen, the data wouldn't be lost forever, and they would still be able to operate.” “It was a wonderful example of how the private sector can help a country when these things happen,” she said. Often, private companies are well positioned to respond quickly due to access to specialized talent, infrastructure, and threat intelligence capabilities. However, this collaboration is not purely altruistic. Given the interconnected nature of the global digital economy, localized cyber incidents can rapidly escalate into broader systemic disruption, affecting industries and regions far beyond the initial target. “From a resiliency standpoint in the financial services industry, larger financial institutions have an obligation to share information with smaller institutions ,” Goldberg said. “And from a global perspective, especially as we think about cyber resilience, we're only as secure as those smallest nations.”
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  Inside the Tech Shift Redefining How Credit Unions Operate 09.07.2026 21m

  Credit unions don't want to be disadvantaged by their technology. They aim to offer members the same capabilities available at competing financial institutions. A critical part of that is having an ecosystem they can plug into—one that allows them to run their operations efficiently while staying competitive. To help credit unions achieve that, Velera recently introduced a unified, cloud-native architecture designed to support agility and future readiness. In a PaymentsJournal podcast, Jeremiah Lotz, Senior Vice President of Enterprise Data and AI at Velera, and James Wester, Co-Head of Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed the benefits this technology stack is intended to bring to credit unions across the country. The New Ecosystem Meeting member expectations requires more than adding new tools on top of existing infrastructure. It depends on a more foundational shift in how core systems are structured—one that allows data, decisions and services to operate in a more connected way across the institution. The Velera Ecosystem consists of the technology layer Stellaris and the intelligence layer Atmos, forming a centralized, cloud-native foundation that brings together payments, data and risk in a single connected environment. Velera developed this ecosystem in partnership with clients over several years, with the goal of making it configurable and adaptable to different credit union needs, as well as improving the member experience. “As member expectations change, we want to have the ability to be flexible and to enable our financial institutions to move along with those member needs quickly as well,” said Lotz. “The accelerated speed and ability to scale intelligently with this unified technology ecosystem is one of our key goals.” “We want to move from disconnected systems to this unified ecosystem where everything works together,” he said. “And we want to be able to build something once and deploy it in multiple places, which will allow us to remove the friction and patchwork integrations that credit unions have historically had to face.” A key design consideration has been keeping the system from becoming overly complex or burdensome for credit unions. Institutions retain the ability to roll out new capabilities and features without major rebuilds—and can integrate new systems or transition to newer processes more easily over time. For instance, small business onboarding, which has historically taken months, can be completed in a matter of weeks within this model. “Credit unions often run what we could call a thin or efficient technology group,” said Wester. “There's no requirement for a rebuild or massive integration, because that's not where these financial institutions are going to be spending a ton of money, time or resources. Anytime you can take that friction out and make it more efficient, that's good.” What Atmos Can Do Atmos aggregates fragmented data into a real-time intelligence layer spanning the ecosystem. In many organizations, payment, fraud and member data reside in separate systems. A shared data layer allows these inputs to be viewed in a more connected operational context across traditionally siloed functions. This structure enables a range of capabilities: 1. Real-time connectivity of information Enables more informed decision-making in the moment, extending beyond transaction-level decisions to shaping the next step in a member’s experience—whether that involves fraud checks, authentication or payment processing. 2. More effective use of AI AI is most effective when connected to high-quality, unified data. Atmos provides a foundation for applying AI to payment and member data, including enabling natural language interactions and insights. 3. End-to-end member experiences Rather than treating interactions as isolated events, connected data allows institutions to understand and support the full member lifecycle—and to design continuous experiences over time. 4. Broader use of data across applications Through APIs and shared data access, credit unions can extend capabilities across multiple use cases rather than being limited to single-point solutions. Catering to Younger Members Attracting younger members has long been a priority for credit unions. These members tend to have different expectations shaped by digital-first experiences. The Velera Ecosystem supports more personalized engagement, using data to help tailor relevant experiences. “This is where the data starts to come to life, especially when I think about how younger generations are interacting with tools on a daily basis,” said Lotz. “I know you've got my information, you know how I used my payment account, and I'm not creeped out by that. But I do have an expectation of the cool tools to help me be better at it.” For example, data can be used to suggest how a member might best use a rewards account or support savings goals. Rather than generic messaging, the goal is to provide timely, relevant guidance for members. The same data can also be used as an opportunity for education—surfacing tools or financial options that members may not have explicitly searched for, but could benefit from. “That creates trust and the understanding that I know my credit union has this data about me and I know that they're using it in a way that benefits me,” said Lotz. “That makes me appreciate and trust them because they've got my needs in mind.” Moving into the Future Many credit unions still operate within legacy systems that limit how quickly they can adapt. In many cases, meaningful changes require significant rebuilds. As organizations gain better access to and integration of their data, new possibilities emerge that were previously difficult to implement. In an AI-enabled environment, broader and better-structured data can improve how institutions understand and engage with members. The more relevant data that can be fed into those models, the more effectively those systems can support outreach and decision-making. Awareness of digital privacy and data usage continues to grow. Credit unions often have a trust advantage with their members, which can create an opportunity to use data responsibly and transparently in ways that ultimately benefit members. “You can help a member understand their account usage, where they can use particular financial tools, and where they can do things to help with savings or retirement,” said Lotz. “The earlier you start encouraging those responsible behaviors, the better it is for everyone.”
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  What Embedded Payments Can Solve for Small Businesses 08.07.2026 16m

  The most expensive resource in any small business isn’t capital—it’s time. And increasingly, that time is being swallowed up by something owners never set out to manage: payments. The last thing business owners want to do is devote more energy to managing payment processes. Many small businesses have discovered business management software with embedded payment capabilities that remove much of the friction associated with reconciling multiple systems and statements while uncovering a wealth of valuable customer data. Worldpay for Platforms, now Global Payments’ annual Merchant Insider Report examines trends like these that are driving payment innovation and reshaping the small business landscape. In a PaymentsJournal Podcast, Matt Downs, President, Integrated and Platforms at Global Payments, and Don Apgar, Director of Merchant Payments at Javelin Strategy and Research, explored the findings and opportunities these advanced platforms  present for embedded finance. The Payment Trends Worldpay for Platforms’ data shows that customer expectations around payments have shifted from a “nice to have” feature to a mission-critical capability. Across the three years of this research, one of the most consistent trends has been the growing importance of software. Indeed, 85% of small and medium-sized businesses say software is more important today than it was three or five years ago. In 2018, roughly 40% of buying decisions included payments and software as a bundled package, according to Downs. Today, that figure has climbed to 70%, meaning that when businesses switch payment providers, they increasingly want software included as part of the solution. What's driving this increase is the growing importance of integrated workflows. Software is becoming specialized across industries, fueling demand for bundled payment and software solutions that streamline operations and reduce complexity. “We're seeing the same in our research,” said Apgar. “Merchants want a holistic platform that that they can run their business on. Consumer expectation with regard to ease and a lack of friction have significantly increased. Business owners today are looking for an easy to use, all in one package of software and payments together that can run their business and deliver a superior customer experience.” The Biggest Concern: Friction One of the most surprising findings in this year's Merchant Insider report is that the payment experience itself is not the primary driver of customer retention. Instead, friction remains the biggest obstacle. Wherever friction appears, it serves as an early warning sign that churn may follow. More than 80% of merchants surveyed said they would switch platforms for better payment capabilities. At the core, what they’re looking for is a truly seamless experience. Businesses have come to expect payments to be invisible. Take Uber, for example. It’s difficult to tell where the transportation experience ends and the financial experience begins. Drivers don't have to worry about whether passengers will pay or whether they’ll have enough cash to cover expenses, because they know they’ll be paid quickly and reliably. Business management software aims to provide a similar experience for small businesses by handling payments while providing merchants with visibility into cash flow and business performance. The latest improvements have gone beyond integrating payments into business software to a level that makes them not just functional but much more useful to the merchant. Integrated payments simply connect payment processing to software, pushing transaction data back into the platform and recording reconciliation. Embedded payments go much further. They encompass the entire workflow—from customer onboarding and payment acceptance to reconciliation, reporting, and even chargeback management within the software itself. Worldpay for Platforms’ research shows that 99% of respondents are willing to consider embedded finance capabilities. “Instead of having to pivot out to look at your online banking portal or log out and log into your merchant processor for portable reporting, they want it all seamless right there in that software,” said Downs. “Seamless, flexible, full reconciliation. That is the definition of embedded payments, and they can get the full experience without leaving the vertical software. This is being done at scale around the globe. If you've missed part of that design, you're set up to lose.” The Rise of Vertical SaaS Merchant acquirers have enabled businesses through horizontal solutions for years, but newer vertical SaaS providers understand the unique operational challenges within specific industries. When a merchant operates on a SaaS platform, the fintech provider has access to data. They can see seasonal fluctuations, peak periods, and revenue patterns. These insights allow them to understand not only which financial products a merchant may need, but also when they are most likely to need them. As fintech companies continue expanding into banking and delivering more services under one roof, they are likely to challenge traditional banks’ ability to maintain relationships with their depositors. “Banks are getting into the software services, but they're not doing a good job of leveraging the data that the software generates,” said Apgar. “Being able to bolt on POS software to a bank account is not the same level that the fintechs are bringing through their embedded finance model.” Worldpay for Platforms’ embedded finance solution serves as an orchestration platform that allows software companies to build these experiences with minimal development and go-to-market effort. The orchestration layer allows providers to combine multiple financial products and create highly tailored experiences for specific use cases. Looking ahead, AI-powered capabilities for areas such as dispute management are expected to further enhance the platform experience. “We're helping our partners think about future-proofing,” said Downs. “We're thinking about how they can differentiate from their competitors by creating a richer payments and embedded finance experience right there natively in the software.” Time to “Pick a Lane and Go” At the end of the day, increased competition is driving innovation, and small businesses stand to benefit the most. While many of these advances are still in their early stages, that doesn’t mean business owners can afford to wait. “Now's the time to pick a position,” said Downs. “With embedded payments and more specifically embedded finance, you’ve got to pick a lane and go, because it's going to get hypercompetitive out there. If you want to provide value to your clients and drive that net revenue retention and the ability to grow, now is the time. At the rate that AI is going to move, either you better serve your customer—or your customer is going to find a way to get served themselves.” Final Takeaways Across the 2026 Merchant Insider Report, the story is consistent: software is more critical, payments are more central, and expectations are higher than ever. At the end of the day, this is about helping merchants grow revenue, operate more efficiently, and scale their business — so platforms can too. If you want the full picture, this year’s report breaks down where platforms are winning—and where they’re falling behind. Download the full report on Worldpay for Platform's, now Global Payments, website today.
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  The Growing Importance of Payments Risk Expertise 06.07.2026 10m

  Payments risk is no longer confined to a single payment rail or transaction type. Financial institutions and businesses today must manage risk across the ACH Network, checks, wire transfers, real-time payments, and a growing number of emerging payment methods. As the payments ecosystem becomes more interconnected, professionals need a broader understanding of how risks differ across payment channels—and how to effectively manage them. That need has helped elevate the importance of Nacha’s Accredited Payments Risk Professional (APRP) accreditation. In a PaymentsJournal Podcast, Kerry Sellen, Senior Consultant at Nacha Consulting, and Ben Danner, Senior Analyst of Debit at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed the value of the credential, the knowledge it provides, and the role it can play in career development. Introducing the Credential The APRP certification focuses not only on ACH payments, but also on checks, debit and credit cards, prepaid cards, wire transfers, and emerging and alternative payment methods. Any professional in the payments industry can work toward accreditation, although Nacha recommends having at least two years of industry experience before taking the APRP exam. “It's great hearing of its availability,” said Danner. “I originally thought this was only geared for bankers and financial institutions, but it's really wide open for payment professionals across the space. Not just your Main Street banker, but also your startup fintech teams.” The Path to an APRP While the APRP can help professionals build a strong foundation in payments risk, it also offers value to those with years—or even decades—of industry experience. Because the accreditation covers a range of payment types and risk considerations, it often exposes professionals to areas of the payments ecosystem outside of their day-to-day responsibilities. Sellen’s career path illustrates that point. Even after spending years in the payments industry, she found that pursuing the APRP expanded her understanding of risk management and introduced her to new concepts and payment channels. Sellen started her career working in ACH payments at eFunds Corporation. She later joined First Data, where she spent the next 20 years serving in a variety of roles across the payments industry. “My first job was to work with the team to write the requirements for the ACH system to process their ACH payments,” she said. “During my tenure at First Data, I also led teams in the business risk and controls group operations and product development.” After leaving First Data, Sellen joined Nacha where she’s been a senior consultant with Nacha Consulting for the past seven years. “Risk management is always a part of the engagement,” she said When she registered for the test, one of the study materials included was the Accredited Payments Risk Professional Handbook. At more than 100 pages, the handbook can seem intimidating at first because it covers a tremendous range of payment types and risk concepts. To help remember all the terminology, Sellen created a spreadsheet containing key terms and their definitions. “What surprised me was the number of regulations and guidelines that the candidate needs to have a general understanding of,” Sellen said. “Whenever I had down time—like waiting for my kids at school or at the doctor's office—I always had my printed spreadsheet with me.” A Much-Sought-After Expertise The APRP helps professionals understand the risks associated with different payment types and the controls that can mitigate or manage those risks. That expertise can make a significant difference to a customer’s bottom line. “I had a client who was experiencing significant fraud,” said Sellen. “I reviewed their policies and procedures, their risk management processes, and I spoke to the risk management team. After gaining a good understanding of their processes and procedures, I made some suggestions on how they could implement additional controls. A few months later, the client called and said the number of fraud cases had significantly decreased.” In addition to signaling professional credibility and expertise, accreditations such as the APRP are important for career development. They can make individuals more attractive candidates for new opportunities and advancement, particularly in payments risk, compliance, and fraud management. Important Related Professional Designations There are several important accreditations related to the APRP. The Accredited ACH Professional (AAP) designation focuses on the rules and regulations governing ACH payments and is valuable both for professionals who are new to ACH and for those with years of experience in the industry. The Accredited Faster Payments Professional (AFPP) designation focuses on faster payment systems such as Same Day ACH and FedNow. As these payment methods grow, the AAP, AFPP, and APRP accreditations will become increasingly important for organizations hiring the next generation of professionals to build payment applications and develop new payment capabilities. “Nacha is a highly respected institution across the banking and payments industry,” Danner said, adding that Nacha accreditations carry a significant industry weight, which is very important for career development.” Getting Started For anyone interested in taking this year’s exam, it’s important to register as early as possible and begin studying as soon as the APRP handbook is received. Applicants can also attend Nacha’s Payments Institute or participate in Payments Association training programs designed specifically for APRP test prep. The annual test window begins on Aug. 3 and runs through Aug. 29. “If you have worked in payments for years, you will add a highly respected qualification to your resume,” Sellen said. “If you're relatively new to the field, you will give yourself an edge over the competition.”
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  How Cautionary Spending Is Fueling Gift Card Purchases 30.06.2026 30m

  Consumers may be spending more cautiously, but they’re not spending less strategically. As inflation, rising debt, and economic uncertainty continue to pressure household budgets, shoppers are becoming intentional about every purchase they make. To stretch their budgets further, many consumers now map out discounts and sales well in advance of major shopping events and holidays. This growing focus on value and flexibility is helping fuel interest in prepaid products. Gift cards are no longer reserved for birthdays and holidays; they’re increasingly being used for everything from loyalty rewards and incentives to personal spending and budgeting. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Sarah Kositzke, Global Insights Director at Blackhawk Network (BHN) and Jordan Hirschfield, Director of Prepaid at Javelin Strategy & Research discussed BHN’s latest 2026 Global Spring Gifting Research, which uncovered changing consumer behaviors, the role of emerging technologies and platforms, and why gift cards provide retailers with a strategic advantage in any economic environment. Adapting Gifting Traditions The financial challenges of recent years have caused staples like groceries to become a budgetary concern for many consumers. Fuel has also become a budget-buster, with prices rising sharply since the beginning of the year. Even gifting is becoming more intentional, as consumers apply the same value-driven mindset they use in everyday purchasing decisions. These factors have shifted consumer behavior. Shoppers are now more deal-motivated and intentional about how they spend each dollar. They are leveraging loyalty and rewards programs, and many have leaned into bargain hunting, often with the help of AI or social media. “It's important that we understand that consumers are not abandoning gifting traditions; they’re adapting how they want to participate in them,” Kositzke said. “They’ve got all of these various channels in which they can leverage to find those cards. It is this major opportunity for brands to think about, ‘How do we offer more flexibility? How are we thinking about the value that we're driving and the convenience, especially as we think about the economic times we're in?’” In difficult financial times, gift cards are frequently viewed as a port in a storm because they offer budget certainty for buyers and spending flexibility for recipients. These benefits have made prepaid products particularly popular among younger generations. According to BHN, 72% of Gen Z and millennial consumers purchased gift cards instead of physical gifts this past year, compared to 38% of their older counterparts. Many younger consumers, often working with smaller discretionary budgets, look for gifts that maximize value, are useful to recipients, and help reduce waste. Gift cards meet that need while also offering convenience for buyers, who can often earn loyalty points or rewards through retailer promotions. “We saw growth in projected gift card spend as well as purchasing,” Kositzke said. “About 77% of respondents told us, ‘We're going to purchase a card this upcoming year to give to somebody else,’ and self-use showcased almost a double-digit growth. They're starting to recognize that budget value just even for themselves, and younger consumers are especially likely to use gift cards for both gifting and themselves. It's creating that incremental revenue opportunity for brands.” AI, Loyalty, and Smarter Spending Another trend driven by younger consumers is the use of AI as a shopping assistant, with many using the technology to compare prices and scour product reviews. “Consumers are building what we call this value optimization toolkit, where it combines AI searches, loyalty rewards, deal discovery, flexible payment, and all the things that help us act smarter across that purchase journey,” Kositzke said. “I think of it as the place to find all that stored value or the change that you have in your couch cushion. AI is definitely going to be leveraged, probably even embedded in there somehow to combine all of these things together.” As AI plays a greater role in curating products and services, standing out in AI-generated recommendations has become a critical component of merchants’ brand strategies. Down the line, building loyalty will also become more important—and more challenging. This is an area where gift cards excel. BHN found that roughly 92% of survey respondents participate in loyalty programs, with gift cards remaining one of the most popular redemption options. This self-use of prepaid products can create strong customer relationships, often opening the door to additional engagement and growth. “That's another way to optimize your program, to think about how do I get gift cards delivered to somebody who is self-use, but how do I get them to feel like that giftable moment to give to somebody else?” Kositzke said. “This just means your brand needs to think about traditional search, but also what's beyond traditional search with some of those other e-commerce optimization tools that you might need to leverage.” The Rise of Social Channels Standing out on social media is equally as important as creating AI-friendly branding. Consumers want gift cards to be delivered through the same channels they use to communicate with friends and family, including TikTok and Instagram. While email is still the primary delivery method for gift cards, younger generations have shown strong interest in social media and text-based delivery options. For these consumers, the experience extends beyond receiving a gift card—it also includes how they discover and purchase it. “We saw more interest in terms of purchasing on social channels and especially through social streaming events,” Kositzke said. “Think of any of those events where you're captivated in terms of, ‘Oh my gosh, I wish I could have this,’ but maybe you're not ready for that full breadth of product line that is being offered in that moment.” “But a gift card helps to say, ‘I know that I'll purchase this, but maybe I have this gift card and I have to add some additional funds later,’” she said. “There's definitely strong interest in getting gift cards during those events. In fact, we saw about 50% of respondents already purchasing gift cards through social streaming events and almost 7 in 10 want to in the future.” Despite the growing emphasis on AI, social media, and digital gift cards, there remains a strong contingent of customers who expect retailers to offer physical gift cards. In fact, roughly half of respondents in BHN’s research said they would prefer a physical gift card over a digital alternative. Ultimately, the most effective strategy is an omnichannel approach centered on flexibility. Even when consumers purchase gift cards in-store or online, they expect to use them seamlessly across channels. “That's something that's critical, it’s the digitization of cards and how you manage and handle both a digital card and a physical card in the digital atmosphere,” Hirschfield said. “Digital and physical are not opposing forces, they are complementary forces and there is a merging of them at a certain point into the digital realm that is important.” Engagement, Retention, and Incremental Revenue The capabilities of technologies like digital wallets and AI are creating new use cases for gift cards and fueling additional demand. Merchants have responded by developing loyalty programs designed to capitalize on growing self-use trends. “It all capitalizes on the behavioral returns,” Hirschfield said. “We consistently see redeemers come to the store more. They spend more than the value of the card. They buy more expensive items. When you focus on that behavior, the cycle keeps moving in positive ways. That redeemer who has a positive experience will buy more cards for themselves and for others. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.” This cycle continues to expand through the growth of digital messaging channels and social media platforms. For younger consumers in particular, these platforms have become central hubs where they discover, engage with, and purchase the products they want. “You want consumers to be met where they are shopping,” Kositzke said. “You've got to still be in store, but you can't forget that digital is online and growing, and in these loyalty ecosystems as well as through social channels. Then, it’s how to get your brand to be recognized within that AI ecosystem too, because you want AI to come back and be like, ‘This is exactly the thing that you should get’ and gift cards should be woven into that narrative.” As these trends continue to converge, prepaid products are poised to play an even larger role in the future of commerce. “In this constrained economy, gift cards are no longer just this nice-to-have,” Kositzke said. “They're a strategic advantage that you have for engagement, for retention and for incremental revenue.” To learn more about this research, check out the new eBook from BHN, “Stretched Thin: How affordability pressures are reshaping consumer spending and gift card preferences.”
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  How the Merchant of Record Became a Global Commerce Engine 23.06.2026 17m

  Picture the scene; a U.S. developer discovers that one of their fastest-growing markets is overseas. For many digital businesses, the first signs of international opportunity develop quickly. However, new local markets also mean new local complexities. Brazilian customers expect support for Pix. In India, UPI dominates the payments landscape. In Poland, BLIK accounts for as much as 70% of e-commerce transations annually. Across any market, local regulations, payment preferences, and fraud considerations can vary significantly. This is how an exciting growth opportunity becomes an operational challenge. These local complexities and risks have fueled the rise of the Merchant of Record (MoR) model, in which a third-party partner assumes liability for key functions such as tax obligations, regulatory compliance, and chargeback handling. While these platforms deliver benefits across all these areas, the evolution of cross-border commerce has transformed MoR solutions from a tax workaround into a critical component of international business operations. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Bridger Bullock, Senior Business Development Manager at Nuvei, and Don Apgar, Director of Merchant Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed the evolution of the Merchant of Record model, the criteria that differentiate these solutions, and how the operational advantages MoR platforms provide can equal—and potentially surpass—the tax and compliance benefits that originally drove their adoption. Far Beyond Orchestration One reason for MoR solutions rise in popularity over recent years is the landscape for international growth becoming exponentially more complex. “Just in the U.S., if you want to manage all of the sales tax collection, there are 13,000 different jurisdictions that you would have to adhere to in making sure that you are compliant,” Bullock said. “Outside of the U.S., you can only imagine how many different rules and jurisdictions you have to be compliant with, and that's just from a tax perspective.” “There's also fraud, which is getting much more complex depending on the region,” he said. “Lastly, there are so many different payment methods for each region that it's critical that merchants offer those payment methods in those local regions so that there is a frictionless customer experience.” Along with domestic real-time payments systems like Pix and UPI, alternative payment methods (APMs) now include everything from stablecoins and buy now, pay later services to digital wallets. As these payment types have emerged, many merchants have sought to increase payment flexibility by leveraging payment orchestration systems that route transactions through the optimal payment rail. While these solutions offer clear value, payments are only one component of successful cross-border commerce. “Orchestration connects the dots from an authorization and a settlement perspective so you can transact globally fairly easily,” Apgar said. “But when you get into complexities such as local APMs, local fraud and risk tools that are available, local tax, and local banking, the complexity really multiplies. Being global today goes way beyond just orchestration.” Taking Gaming Global One of the industries that has been a trailblazer for the MoR model is gaming. Gaming platforms built for digital commerce often face relatively few barriers to expanding their products into new territories. In their zest for expansion, gaming companies have frequently taken a proactive approach to the operational realities of global expansion. “Forward-thinking companies like Roblox or Epic Games look at it holistically, so a local payment method in each region is critical to them,” Bullock said. “Say they want to be able to create the best customer experience in Korea. They need to make sure that GCash is set up as a payment method. Once the customer purchases, the sales tax is collected without Roblox or Epic having to deal with what that sales tax looks like in that region and what fraud looks like in Korea.” Addressing these challenges at a granular level is critical because many gaming platforms aspire to expand into dozens of countries and regions quickly to remain competitive. Effective MoR solutions, therefore, must pay careful attention not only to local payment preferences, but also to tax laws and regulatory requirements that are constantly changing. “Ideally for the merchant, they can do all of this through one API,” Bullock said. “They don't have to go through several different PSPs, payment processors, and gateways to make sure that they can offer all these things. They just have one that can be this all-encompassing solution for them, which takes a huge burden off and makes it a frictionless customer experience during the checkout process.” The Architectural Differences that Matter MoR platforms can provide this level of comprehensive support, but not all solutions are created equal. For merchants and the institutions that serve them, selecting the right provider begins with the fundamentals: ensuring that tax liability and fraud risks are effectively managed. MoR platforms differentiate themselves in several ways: Their distinctly local approach to fraud prevention and compliance management across regions. The level of transparency they provide into the rules, controls, and decision-making processes used to manage risk. Local acquiring capabilities represent another importance differentiator and can often determine the success of an integration. “Let's say that there's a large merchant that has an entity in the U.S,” Bullock said. “Certainly, merchants want the highest authorization rates that they can get. If they have quite a presence of customers in APAC, it gets difficult for the issuers in that region to approve the majority of the transactions because they're looking at those transactions as foreign transactions, as not from that region.” Merchant of Record solutions—on top of all their other benefits—frequently enable local acquiring in regions where merchants don’t have a legal entity. This can improve authorization rates while also delivering a range of operational benefits. “When you talk about local acquiring, you have to talk about local banking, too,” Apgar said. “If you have a local acquirer, they still have to pay the merchant somehow, and a local acquirer is going to pay in local funds, which means you need a local bank account, which then oftentimes you need to have a legal business entity present in that domain so that the bank can open an account for you.” “It’s not just the U.S., all countries have compliance requirements, so complexity quickly spirals,” he said. A Holistic Global Solution At their core, Merchant of Record solutions are designed to simplify the challenges of global commerce by assuming responsibility for many of its most complex operational requirements. This not only eliminates the need for merchants to build these capabilities internally, but also removes the burden of researching and managing the regulatory and tax nuances of every market they operate in. The result is a meaningful operational boost. Alongside the financial gains generated by higher approval rates, stronger fraud prevention, and customer-friendly payment options, merchants gain more time and resources to focus on growing their business. “For merchants, they want to focus on the customer experience, and they want to focus on delivering quality products,” Apgar said. “Being able to offload all this operational responsibility to a Merchant of Record construct is a huge savings operationally and from an opportunity cost and time perspective. It's great that merchants can outsource this without completely relinquishing control over the fraud processes and the mechanics of how it's executed—it's the best of both worlds.” However, fully offloading these responsibilities requires a comprehensive solution that can address all of a merchant’s needs; and can adjust its parameters on the fly as merchants scale and global commerce shifts. It will also require business leaders to rethink how they view MoR solutions. Many still regard them primarily as a tax shortcut or a buffer against chargeback and fraud liability, when in reality they have become a foundational component of modern cross-border commerce. “It should be looked at as an all-inclusive solution to expand internationally,” Bullock said. “It can certainly offload some of the tax and compliance and it does, but it is much more than that. Looking at it from a holistic approach is going to allow the highest authorization rates for many reasons, it's going to create a great customer experience for many reasons, and it's going to offload my burden as a merchant to be compliant for many reasons.”
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  A Career in Payments: Insights from Three Decades at Nacha 22.06.2026 15m

  Few payments professionals have been able to observe and influence the industry as much as Jane Larimer, President and CEO of Nacha, who has helmed the organization that governs the ACH Network through challenging industry transitions and considerable organizational success. In her nearly 31 years at Nacha, Larimer has seen firsthand the shift away from paper checks to moving payments at the speed of modern life. During Larimer’s tenure, ACH has served as the national economic infrastructure. In 2025, the ACH Network processed $93 trillion. However, Nacha has not been content to coast on this success. Instead, the organization has continued to lead the payments conversation through innovation, education, and consensus-building. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Larimer discussed the biggest accomplishments and hurdles in her storied career, the many new projects on Nacha’s docket, and why—after over three decades—she is still excited to be a part of the payments industry. The Accelerating Shift from Paper to Digital Although the financial services sector has undergone a widescale digital transformation, it didn’t happen overnight. “One of the first things that I think of among my accomplishments was there were still a ton of paper checks then, only maybe 50% of Americans got paid with Direct Deposit,” Larimer said. “There were billions of checks, so one of the first projects I did at Nacha was check conversion. What that meant was stripping the information off the MICR line of a paper check and then converting that into electronic payments—that was literally the first year.” Also early in her tenure was an electronic benefit transfer (EBT) initiative aimed at moving from paper-based to electronic solutions. The goal was to reduce reliance on paper food stamps, which were high-risk for fraud and carried social stigma. To address this issue, Nacha worked with networks, merchants, and financial institutions to shift the paper-based system to an interoperable state-issued card usable on debit card networks and at the point-of-sale. This effort ultimately led to the launch of the Quest Operating Rules and QUEST Service Mark. For years afterward, Larimer and Nacha worked to grow ACH payments to be more vital than ever. In 2016, Nacha introduced Same Day ACH, providing the capability to send and receive ACH debit and credit payments within hours on the same business day. “That was just a huge sea change in 2016,” Larimer said. “Everybody’s been saying this for a long time and we're always talking about the pace of change. Back in 2000 and then 2015 we thought that things were changing quickly, but what we're seeing is that pace of change has accelerated, and it's always going to be accelerating.” A Momentous Year for Payments This momentum isn’t slowing down, as faster payments, digital assets, and artificial intelligence continue to reshape the industry. Nacha is advancing a series of initiatives aimed at expanding capability while bolstering trust in the payments space. One of the most significant developments is the planned increase of the Same Day ACH transaction cap from $1 million to $10 million—This enhancement is expected to broaden adoption by enabling a wider range of commercial use cases for what has already become a fast-growing payment method. At the same time, Nacha has approved new risk management rules taking effect this year, reflecting a parallel priority: addressing the rising threat and volume of credit-push fraud. Together, these changes underscore a dual focus on scaling payment capabilities while reinforcing system integrity. “We have a lot of irons in the fire,” she said. “We are working as hard as we can in conjunction with the industry to make the ACH as efficient as it possibly can be, and to meet the needs of the end users of the [ACH] Network and all the participants with the [ACH] Network—the financial institutions, our processors, our corporates, and consumers.” Beyond rulemaking and ACH Network enhancements, Nacha is also continuing to engage the industry through education and convening. One recent milestone was its Smarter Faster Payments conference in San Diego this spring, which brought together the ecosystem for more than 130 educational sessions spanning topics from stablecoins, AI and faster payments to compliance and risk. In an often fragmented and rapidly changing industry, conferences like this play a critical role in helping industry professionals synthesize emerging trends and translate them into practical strategies. “It's trying to invest in the things that you think are going to go forward, because along with all the cool stuff, there's a lot of noise,” Larimer said. “It's using discernment to say these are things that are important to me, they're important to the industry, and let me learn enough about them to be able to make that determination about where are we going with this. Could this be of use to my company?” “How much do we have to understand about this to be able to appropriately discern whether it is strategically lifted up as a priority or say: ‘Not right now. This bears watching, but this isn't where we need to be placing our bets right now,’” she said. Relevant Education in a Fast-Moving Industry Alongside conferences, accreditations have become an increasingly important way to stay current in the payments industry. For newcomers, the challenge is not a lack of information, but an overabundance of it—where separating insight from noise can feel like a steep learning curve. Accreditations like Nacha’s Accredited Faster Payments Professional (AFPP) and Accredited ACH Professional (AAP) can serve as valuable tools for onboarding new employees and refreshing the knowledge of seasoned veterans. However, the benefits of these accreditations extend beyond education. They are also widely viewed as an industry-wide mark of credibility. “We were really happy to be working with the U.S. Faster Payments Council on the AFPP, because we're believers in education at Nacha,” Larimer said. “Accreditation is a great way to not only learn the material, but then to be able to bring it back to your organization to help them, because I truly believe that people who understand their business are a lot better at it.” “They understand the nuts and the bolts, and having your AFPP or your AAP shows the world that you know it too,” she said. “It's great for career-building and it’s a great benchmark.” An Outsized Impact on the Industry Despite the complexities of the payments space—and in many ways because of them—the industry remains one where careers like Larimer’s are possible. “I love this job, I love this industry, and I love payments,” Larimer said. “Things that I value deeply are the relationships in the payments business, where you're out at a conference and you see people that you've built relationships with over the years. It's the people you can give a call to if you have a question, or if you need something, or if there's an issue.” “When I go to Smarter Faster Payments, there are people that I met my first year at Nacha who are still coming to it,” she said. “Then, there are people that I've just met this year that I've already had back and forth with because I've learned from them. It's a relationship business and I'm a people person, so that makes me happy.” Along with professional relationships, the payments sector offers the promise of lifelong learning for those curious enough to explore and willing to grow. Together with networking and accreditation, there are also evolving industry-wide initiatives such as those led by Nacha’s Payments Innovation Alliance. The Alliance serves as an innovation consortium for the payments industry, with current work spanning pay-by-bank, AI, and quantum computing. Larimer also praised the Nacha staff as "outstanding, smart, and good-at-what-they-do folks." "We're small—we're less than 80 people—but I think we have an outsized impact on the payments industry," she said. "I couldn't be prouder of the folks that I work with, and I just look forward to doing everything we can to make the ACH as strong and as effective as possible.” And as for what the future holds? “For right now, there is so much happening. I cannot imagine being bored," said Larimer. "I think we have a lot in front of us and there's a lot of exciting opportunities out there for the industry. And I just look forward to building it all with the industry."