“As many Americans were without access to employer facilities for over a year, the latest doxoINSIGHTS report shows consumers shouldered a large bill pay burden to account for long hours worked from home. The categories most impacted by remote work – Utilities, Cable & Internet, and Mobile – were therefore the most likely to have shown an increase since March of 2020.”

“The cost of failed payments is estimated to have cost the global economy $118.5 billion in fees, labor and lost business in 2020 according to the latest study from Accuity, a LexisNexis® Risk Solutions company. The total cost of failed payments regionally was $41.1 billion in EMEA, $33.7 billion in the Americas and $43.7 billion in Asia-Pacific (APAC). The report shows that the average cost of failed payments varied across the globe, depending on the type of organization. Banks spent on average approximately $360,000 in 2020 on failed payments – which includes all fees, labor and costs related to customer attrition – whereas the average corporate firm spent just over $200,000.”

“Improvements in technology, coupled with growing demand for digital payment methods, are increasingly reshaping the way payments are made. Non-bank institutions now offer a wide range of retail payment services. This raises the question of where the regulatory perimeter should be drawn. Financial authorities now face the task of deciding whether the risk profile of different payment services are appropriately reflected in their regulatory frameworks. A sound understanding of the regulatory approaches in other jurisdictions contributes to this assessment. This paper explores how non-bank payment service providers (NBPSPs) are regulated and provides a cross-country overview of the regulatory requirements for digital payment and e-money services offered by NBPSPs. It benefited from responses to a CPMI survey of 75 jurisdictions conducted in early 2021.”

“This report describes the responses to the 2020 Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED). The Federal Reserve Board has fielded this survey each fall since 2013 to understand the wide range of financial challenges and opportunities facing families in the United States. The findings in this report primarily reflect financial circumstances in the fourth quarter of 2020. When the Federal Reserve Board created the SHED, the economy was still recovering from the Great Recession, and the survey helped monitor that recovery and identify possible risks to the financial stability of U.S. families. In 2020, the United States dealt with unprecedented challenges stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. This annual survey, along with two supplemental surveys conducted earlier in the year, provides insights into the challenges that people were facing as a result, as well as the effects of efforts to alleviate these financial difficulties.”

“About two-thirds of the U.S. population struggles to spend, save, borrow, and plan, yet those households contribute 84% of total spending on interest and fees for everyday financial services like credit cards, auto loans, remittances, and overdraft charges, and spend a greater share of their income compared with those who are financially healthy. Financially Coping and Vulnerable households spent a total of $255 billion in 2020, out of a total of $303 billion nationwide. On average, Financially Vulnerable households spent 13% of their income on fees and interest for everyday financial services, compared with 5% for Coping households and just 1% for Financially Healthy households.”

“An in-depth investigative study by the Better Business Bureau (BBB) finds an increase in reports of scams involving gift cards, with hundreds of millions of dollars in losses over the last few years. The study — Gift Card Payment Scams: BBB Reveals Why Scammers Love Gift Cards — looks at the scope of fraud involving gift cards as a payment method, the way various cards work, the scammers who exploit them, the efforts to combat the scams and the steps that the industry can take to further tackle this scourge. Read the full gift card scam study .”

“The impact of COVID-19 has hit women and girls hard. The World Bank reports that 2021 will bring the first increase in extreme poverty since 1998, with a minimum of 71 million people expected to fall into destitution, and UN Women estimates that at least 47 million more women and girls will fall below the poverty line in 2021. There will be at least 247 million women 15+ living in extreme poverty this year.”

“In 2020, eCommerce spending grew at the fastest rate in five years, while usage of cash for in-store payments fell sharply, as global consumers made increasing use of mobile wallets and other alternative payment methods in 2020 during the pandemic, according to new report released today from financial technology leader FIS ® (NYSE: FIS).”

“Countries are moving fast toward creating digital currencies. Or, so we hear from various surveys showing an increasing number of central banks making substantial progress towards having an official digital currency. But, in fact, close to 80 percent of the world’s central banks are either not allowed to issue a digital currency under their existing laws, or the legal framework is not clear. To help countries make this assessment, we reviewed the central bank laws of 174 IMF members in a new IMF staff paper , and found out that only about 40 are legally allowed to issue digital currencies.”