“The European Central Bank (ECB) published today the findings of its commissioned research on citizens’ payment habits and their attitudes towards digital payments in order to gain a deeper understanding of user preferences as part of the digital euro project . Based on the responses of focus groups and online communities across all euro area countries, the report shows a strong preference for payment methods with pan-European reach and universal acceptance in physical shops and online.”

“The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a report today showing that credit card issuers charged $12 billion in late fees in 2020. Late fee penalties are charged in addition to interest when a cardholder does not make the minimum payment by the due date.”

“i2c Inc. , a leading provider of digital payment and banking technology, today released a first-of-its-kind report on crypto-backed cards, one of the world’s fastest-growing card categories. The report examines account and transactional data from more than 4,000 traditional and crypto-backed card programs, across 40 countries and three continents.”

“A survey of leading global banks by Icon Solutions has revealed that Request to Pay is widely expected to challenge established payment methods, with 87% of respondents viewing it as a good alternative to direct debits and 71% expecting it will reduce merchant’s dependency on payment cards. Yet 67% also identify bank readiness as the main barrier impacting adoption of Request to Pay services, with the limitations of existing technology and a lack of clear strategy seen as the key inhibiting factors.”

“Today, Nacha announced the release of the Payments Innovation Alliance’s 2021 Annual Report , detailing how the Alliance continued to offer critical thought leadership on emerging topics impacting the payments industry this year. The Alliance is a diverse membership organization that seeks to grow and advance payments innovation to better meet the needs of the modern ACH Network and the evolving payments industry worldwide.”

“Released today, Mastercard Economics Intitute’s “ Economy 2022 ” is a global outlook for the coming year based on critical trends as seen through the lens of the consumer. With a team of data scientists and economists and drawing on aggregated and anonymized sales activity in the Mastercard network among other sources, we’ve assessed how five fundamental factors — savings and spending, supply chains, digital acceleration, global travel, and a growing list of economic risks — will continue to shape the global economy.”

“Today, The Clearing House (TCH) released its 2021 Consumer Survey: Data Privacy and Financial App Usage that shows consumers who are using digital banking and fintech apps on a regular basis to manage their finances want greater disclosure and control over their personal financial data, but know little about fintechs’ data collection, management, and sharing practices.”

“Debit cards have become the preferred payment method among Millennials and Gen Zers for online purchases and for use in digital wallets. A recent Carat Insights Report from Fiserv Inc. reveals that 59% of Millennials and Gen Zers use debit online because they prefer the financial control debit cards provide over their finances. Overall, 48% of consumers say they prefer using a debit card when making a purchase online, compared to 36% preferring credit and 11% favoring digital wallets.”

“The cost to businesses of processing card payments in the UK is greater than it should be, and it is too difficult for those businesses to switch between intermediaries that link them into card payment systems, a UK regulator has found following an extensive review. The Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) has published its final report into the card-acquiring market (146 page / 1.85MB PDF). The review found that businesses that record annual sales from customer card payments of between £15,000 and £50 million are not benefitting from interchange fee caps introduced in 2015.“

“A new research paper by 451 Research, a part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, and commissioned by Discover® Global Network found digital payment services and financial technology partnerships are reshaping the way in which consumers around the world send, spend and store their money. The findings come as the payments industry converges on Las Vegas for Money 20/20 to discuss the latest trends, innovations and ideas.”

“The report found that nearly 45% of consumers frequently use mobile wallets to make payments (>20 transactions a year) up from 23% in the 2020 poll. Furthering this trend, global B2B non-cash transactions will increase to reach nearly 200 billion transactions by 2025, from 121.5 billion in 2020, according to Capgemini estimates.”

• Thirty-five percent of study participants indicated their card-linking programs grew by more than 100% in the past year.
• E-commerce and grocery topped restaurants as best-fitting card-linking merchant categories for the first time, as COVID-19 kept consumers home.
• Support is gaining for privacy rules—including those in place in California and the EU—that put data ownership and control in the hands of consumers.
• Seventy-nine percent of respondents reported that they personally increased their use of mobile wallets in the past year, and more than 65% reported they took advantage of their mobile wallets’ discounts and offers.

“Just over two-thirds of consumers globally (67%) now expect bricks-and-mortar retail stores to accept contactless payments and just under half (44%) wouldn’t shop at a store that only offers payment methods that require contact with a cashier or shared device, a survey of merchants and consumers in nine countries around the world has found.”

“In its second year, the study aims to provide greater insights into the short to medium term impact of the global pandemic on fintechs, how they have performed in the face of global and local market conditions, what steps they have taken to respond to customer requirements and how the regulatory response to Covid-19 has affected their development and growth…The CCAF at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School is encouraging fintechs to take just 20-30 minutes to complete its survey before the 1 October 2021 closing deadline. The survey can be found here.“

“A new report from Juniper Research has found that global contactless card transaction values will reach $2.5 trillion in 2021, from $1.7 trillion in 2020, with cards retaining the majority share of overall contactless transaction values at 79% in 2021. The pandemic has significantly accelerated an existing contactless card usage trend, and these value increases will be sustained beyond 2021 and into the future. The new research, Contactless Payments: Trends, Opportunities and Market Forecasts 2021-2026 , found that the combination of accelerated card issuance and usage during the pandemic with a series of global transaction limit increases have unlocked significant growth potential for contactless payments, fundamentally changing the payments paradigm.”