In recent years, there has been a clear shift in the way payments are perceived in the travel industry. Previously, payments have been an afterthought, acting simply as the final step in the buying journey for consumers, rather than adding any form of value in the customer experience. Whereas today, the payment journey has become a central part of a travel business' customer experience.

In a significant development, Visa and Mastercard have reached a settlement totaling $197 million to resolve a prolonged class action lawsuit alleging the manipulation of ATM fees to artificially inflate costs.

The lawsuit, which has been ongoing for a considerable period, asserts that the ATM network regulations imposed by Mastercard and Visa resulted in inflated access fees for individuals withdrawing cash from bank-operated machines.

Southeast Asia Commercial Joint Stock Bank (SeABank, stock code SSB) and Visa Inc. further tightens their comprehensive cooperative partnership by a strategic cooperation agreement on developing digital payments. This cooperation aims to facilitate SeABank's delivery of the best solutions, improvement of data capacity and expertise to open up new opportunities for advancements, thereby accelerating SeABank's payment services development strategy.

Coin Metrics, a leading provider of crypto financial intelligence, is pleased to announce that it has added data from Coinbase Derivatives and the Coinbase International Exchange to its Market Data Feed.

Light Frame, a pioneering Swiss-American FinTech company headquartered in Providence, R.I., today announced the successful oversubscription and completion of its Pre-Seed financing round, raising $1.7 million.

As businesses grow, the complexity of sales tax compliance increases. Addressing this challenge is Kintsugi, a fintech startup using advanced AI to simplify tax compliance. Today, Kintsugi announced the successful completion of a $6 million Series A funding round, valuing the company at $40 million.

Forward, a tech partner that enables SaaS companies to integrate and monetize payments, has successfully raised $16M in seed funding. This round was spearheaded by Commerce Ventures, Elefund, and Fiserv. The new capital will help Forward cater to the growing demand from software partners and leverage artificial intelligence to enhance payment risk functions, significantly improving both client and merchant experiences.

Most new ecommerce businesses create digital strategies with one goal in mind: Get customers to the checkout. 

That’s how retail has always worked. In a traditional high street store, if a salesperson can convince a shopper to come across to the counter, then their work is done. 

Financial institutions are prime targets for cyber threats because of the large amounts of sensitive data they handle, their place in the economy, and their usage of infrastructure such as mainframes. The need for robust cybersecurity measures has never been more pressing.

Signicat, the European leader in digital identity and fraud prevention solutions, today announces a new report on the growing threat of AI-driven identity fraud in partnership with independent consultancy Consult Hyperion. The research reveals that fraud prevention decision-makers across Europe are experiencing more AI-driven identity fraud and expect it to grow, but are unprepared to tackle it, and haven’t been able to implement measures to prevent it yet.