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.”

The post The Missing Piece in Banks’ Identity Protection Strategy appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

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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The post The Case for Not Building Your Own Remittance Stack appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

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.”

The post When Faster Isn’t Better: The New Rules of Business Payments appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

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.

The post For Gen Z, Banking Loyalty Begins with Payments appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

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.”

The post Tap-to-Pay Gives Small Merchants a Big Advantage appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

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.”

The post Modern Cyber Risk Is Breaking Longstanding Security Assumptions appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

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.”

The post Inside the Tech Shift Redefining How Credit Unions Operate appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

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.

The post What Embedded Payments Can Solve for Small Businesses appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

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.”

The post The Growing Importance of Payments Risk Expertise appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

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.”

The post How Cautionary Spending Is Fueling Gift Card Purchases appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

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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