ANNOUNCEMENTSFinTech Breakthrough, a market intelligence organization that recognizes top companies, technologies and products in the global fintech market, heralded the winners of its seventh annual awards program. Award categories include digital banking, personal finance, lending, payments, investments, regtech, insurtech and more. This year's Best Consumer Payments Platform award went to PayNearMe; InComm Payments won the Consumer Payments Innovation award. Best POS Solution award went to Wisetack; myPOS won the POS Innovation award. This year's program attracted more than 4,000 nominations worldwide, organizers stated. For a full list of winners, visit fintechbreakthrough.com/2023-winners.
J.P. Morgan will begin piloting biometrics-based payments with select retailers in the United States. This is the first pilot solution to launch from J.P. Morgan Payments' new Commerce Solutions suite of products, dedicated to helping merchants adapt to the rapidly evolving payments landscape. Its biometrics-based payment pilot includes palm and face identification for payments authentication in-store and works on an enroll-capture-authenticate-pay basis. Global biometric payments are expected to reach $5.8 trillion and 3 billion users by 2026, according to Goode Intelligence. J.P. Morgan Payments' biometrics pilot offering, J.P. Morgan stated, should allow for fast, secure and simple checkout experiences for its merchants' customers, delivering a modern payments experience to enhance customer loyalty. The company added that J.P. Morgan Payments is uniquely positioned to enable this solution to meet shopper expectations without compromising security and reliability.
VizyPay was given a bronze Stevie Award for Customer Service Department of the Year in financial services. This marks the seventh award VizyPay has received from the Stevies in the last three years, including two golds, three silvers and two bronze placements in categories such as Fastest Growing Tech Company, Minority-Owned Business, FinTech Solution, and more, VizyPay stated, adding that it is disrupting the industry with transparent, simple and honest services catered to the needs of small business owners. The sales partner support and merchant tech support teams service over 12,000 merchants and over 700 sales partners across the country, and the support teams are a crucial aspect to maintaining the company's values while developing positive relationships with customers and sales partners in the field, VizyPay noted.
Ecommerce risk prevention provider ClearSale was honored with inclusion in the Women Impact Tech 100 list. In its second year and coinciding with International Women's Day, the award recognizes the top 100 standout organizations driving inclusion and equality in the technology industry. ClearSale, judges noted, has a long history of focusing on equity and inclusion—from technology roles and skilled fraud analysts to leadership, embracing diversity has positioned ClearSale as both a global technology leader as well as a positive cultural powerhouse. The Women Impact Tech 100 list's selection process involves extensive research that includes the compilation of public employee reviews of workplace culture for women and underrepresented groups, an assessment of company benefits and perks, and an assessment of an organization's diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
RESEARCHAnalysis from NCC Group's Global Threat Intelligence team revealed there were 240 ransomware attacks in February 2023, a 45 percent increase from January. The volume of activity is the highest recorded by NCC Group for this period, up 30 percent over February 2022 (185), and 2021 (185). The rise highlights the growing threat of ransomware attacks, as the threat landscape continues to evolve, researchers stated. Threat actors LockBit 3.0 drove the majority of February's activity, with 129 ransomware attacks (54 percent). It marks a 150 percent spike in the group's activity compared to January (50 victims). BlackCat (13 percent) was the second most active threat actor, followed by relatively new threat actor BianLian (8 percent), with 20 victims.
Sift, a provider of digital trust and safety, released its Q1 2023 Digital Trust & Safety Index, which found that 16 percent of consumers recently surveyed admitted to committing, or know of someone who has taken part in, payment fraud. In addition, 17 percent of consumers surveyed have encountered online offers to commit payment fraud, a symptom of fraud's accessibility and democratization among everyday internet users. Consumer data was collected via a survey of over 1,000 U.S. adults. Additionally, Sift's report includes fraud data findings from the company's global network of over 34,000 sites and apps. These combined insights have revealed the latest techniques fraudsters are adapting to turn stolen data and proven attack methods into profitable—and marketable—products and services amid shaky economic conditions, researchers found.
PARTNERSHIPSBranded payments provider Blackhawk Network (BHN) partnered with Gift of College to expand the higher education funding platform's digital gift card program with distribution at select digital retailers in the BHN US retailer network. One of the first platforms of its kind, Gift of College allows consumers to give a meaningful gift to family and friends by contributing to a 529 college savings, ABLE disability savings, or student loan account, BHN stated, adding that more gift-givers across the country will be able to leverage BHN's ecommerce distribution network to send eGifts quickly and easily via online gift card retailers, including Giftcards.com, Giftcardmall.com, Kroger.com, Meijer.com, Topsmarkets.com and more.
EMVCo, the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium renewed the charter for the Web Payments Security Interest Group for two years. This will enable the organizations to continue collaborating to enhance the security and interoperability of web payments to support seamless ecommerce checkout experiences, they stated. The renewal follows the recent update of the How EMVCo, FIDO and W3C Technologies Relate document to meet the evolving needs of the payments industry. This reflected updates to EMVCo's EMV® 3-D Secure, EMV Payment Tokenization and EMV Secure Remote Commerce technologies, FIDO's Client-to-Authenticator Protocol, and W3C's Web Authentication, Secure Payment Confirmation and Payment Request API initiatives.
iCheckGateway.com expanded its partnership with communication service provider Haese Business Solutions. Justin Haese, founder and CEO of HBS, and Nikki Estes, senior vice president of marketing at iCG, described how they would utilize his extensive background in cyber security for numerous industries—focused primarily on healthcare, hospitality, and property management organizations—with the omnichannel approach to solving the pain points of accepting payments simply, securely, and reliably using iCG's financial technology. The partners also highlighted the importance of personal relationships with partners, maintaining a secure network and having a cohesive tech package to ensure smooth operations.
Payment solution provider PAX Technology Inc. stated it partnered with unattended payment provider ISVPay to offer customers the first-of-its-kind electric vehicle (EV) charging solution, Charge to Charge, an Android-based POS application running natively on PAX's outdoor rated IM30 unattended payment terminal. This POS application is directly integrated with a smart charger control board to start, stop and monitor the flow of electricity, and a web-based back-end portal provides a variety of robust features including transaction reporting, remote management, and digital signage scheduling, PAX noted.
Payment services provider Worldline launched a strategic initiative with Solana, a blockchain platform designed for decentralized application and Web3 use cases. The initiative, supported by the Solana Foundation, will allow all projects building on Solana direct access to Worldline's Payment Orchestration platform. The projects will be integrated, Worldline stated, allowing for providers to route payments automatically while offering the lowest fees and highest conversion. Solana, a layer one blockchain with 11.5 million active accounts and over 21.9 million minted NFTs, is a fast, secure censorship-resistant blockchain built for scale, Worldline stated, adding that. it hosts and supports a huge array of Web3 businesses and apps.
ACQUISITIONSFirst-Citizens Bank & Trust Co., a subsidiary of Raleigh-based First Citizens BancShares, Inc. entered into an agreement with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to purchase out of FDIC receivership substantially all loans and certain other assets, and assume all customer deposits and certain other liabilities of Silicon Valley Bridge Bank N.A. The transaction is structured as a whole bank purchase with loss share coverage. First Citizens was selected to complete this transaction through a competitive bidding process. No immediate change will be made to customers' current accounts, and they will be able to continue to access their accounts as they do today — through their current websites, mobile apps and branch locations, First-Citizens stated, adding that customers will be notified of any future account changes in advance.
Ingenico, a global provider of payments acceptance solutions, acquired 100 percent of Phos, a provider of software-only POS solutions (SoftPoS). Phos is a premier player in the fast-evolving SoftPoS space, providing best-in-class highly flexible solutions to a large number of acquirers and PSPs, Ingenico stated. SoftPoS, Ingenico added, enables off-the-shelf smartphones or tablets to become payment terminals while complying with the highest standards of payment security. It is a dynamic, fast-growing market: the installed base of SoftPoS terminals is expected to grow from 3.1 million worldwide in 2022 to almost 12 million in 2027. Phos has developed a SoftPoS orchestration platform combining extensive connectivity with flexible user interfaces, Ingenico noted.
APPOINTMENTSDECTA, a provider of end-to-end payment infrastructure, appointed Scott Dawson as head of sales and strategic partnerships.Dawson, an industry veteran of more than 20 years, will be tasked with further strengthening the UK's business development, relationship management, marketing, and operations teams, as well as building on the success already achieved locally in the UK. Previously, he served as commercial director at Neopay. He also held fraud management positions at PSI Holdings and Neteller, before becoming senior fraud manager and then business development manager at ClickandBuy, which was acquired by Deutsche Telekom.
Cash Depot Ltd selected Tony Gaines as its new chief revenue officer. An experienced consumer packaged goods business leader, Gaines will focus on expanding groundbreaking cash services products across multiple channel verticals, Cash Depot said. Gaines brings to the company more than 25 years of experience as an executive in multiple product categories and services. He was an innovator with the E&J Gallo Wine Co., Anheuser Busch, Logic and Advantage Sales and Marketing where he represented several brands in all channels worldwide. In addition, Gaines has worked with fortune 100 CPG companies and led startups to outpace their markets, Cash Depot noted. Most recently, Gaines was the CEO of Stewarts Enterprises.
Get Beyond added a channel sales division to its sales structure, led by Shawn Lally, senior vice president of channel sales, reporting to Mike Peters, Beyond president and CEO. He will lead with support from Michelle Walls, business development executive, Channel Sales. In a career spanning more than two decades, Lally has built, redesigned, and reengineered numerous sales organizations for industry-leading corporations. He has held executive leadership roles at PrimeRevenue, Paysafe, TransFirst and First Data, working with high profile partners. Walls joins Get Beyond with over 25 years of experience in sales, partner management, and business development. Prior to joining Get Beyond, Walls led the partner programs as business development manager of partnerships with PrimeRevenue.
Socure, a provider of digital identity verification and fraud solutions, hired Ayesha Prakash as head of public sector partnerships. Prakash will lead and grow Socure's alliance and partnership ecosystem. Her work will focus on strengthening existing relationships with government agencies and cultivating new collaborations at the federal and state level. Most recently, Prakash served as global vice president of technology partnerships and alliances at KELA, a cyber threat intelligence firm. An award-winning strategic alliance leader, Prakash has extensive experience driving global go-to-market efforts, previously holding leadership positions such as the head of global partnerships and chief revenue officer at leading cybersecurity and technology firms. 
The Green Sheet Inc. is now a proud affiliate of Bankcard Life, a premier community that provides industry-leading training and resources for payment professionals. Click here for more information.
Notice to readers: These are archived articles. Contact names or information may be out of date. We regret any inconvenience.
Prev Next
