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2 days ago | 
paymentsjournal.com | Wesley Grant
Users who consult with Perplexity’s artificial intelligence platform will soon be able to purchase products and services directly within the chat using PayPal. This feature will be exclusive to Perplexity Pro subscribers, who can choose to use either PayPal or Venmo, as well as the payment firm’s passkey checkout solution, to complete one-click purchases. PayPal will manage the heavy lifting of payments, including processing, shipping, tracking, and invoicing.
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3 days ago | 
paymentsjournal.com | Wesley Grant
Some of Square’s best-known products are accessories that turn phones into point-of-sale (POS) terminals. But its new device, Handheld, removes the phone from the equation. Roughly the size of a smartphone, Handheld features a built-in barcode scanner and camera. In addition to supporting traditional card payments and tap-to-pay, it also offers inventory management functions via the Square POS app.
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4 days ago | 
paymentsjournal.com | Wesley Grant
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) found that bitcoin, Ether, and the leading stablecoins facilitated roughly $600 billion in cross-border payments in Q2 2024. The report highlighted that speculation and broader global financing trends are the main forces driving the use of digital assets. BIS also noted that Circle’s USDC and Tether’s USDT stablecoins—along with low-value bitcoin payments—have gained traction in everyday cross-border transactions.
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1 week ago | 
paymentsjournal.com | Wesley Grant
Following a model established by China’s payments apps, South Korea plans to launch a QR code-centric payments service in Indonesia. The Korea Financial Telecommunications & Clearings Institute (KFTC), a division of the Bank of Korea, is leading the initiative, with the broader goal of establishing a network that connects Korean financial services companies with overseas organizations.
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1 week ago | 
paymentsjournal.com | Wesley Grant
Artificial intelligence models are only as effective as the data they’re trained on, which is one reason why Stripe believes its AI-driven payments platform can better detect fraud. At an event, the company said its Payments Foundation Model has been trained on billions of transactions that flow through its systems, which makes the AI model more attuned to the nuanced aspects of each transaction.
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1 week ago | 
paymentsjournal.com | Wesley Grant
The pace of innovation in cross-border payments is relentless, with regular announcements of new technologies and partnerships. Yet even as the ecosystem evolves, adoption of these solutions by commercial users remains slow and uneven. As shifting tariffs force global businesses to reconfigure supply chains, financial institutions have an opportunity to step in with guidance and solutions tailored to meet rapidly changing cross-border payment needs.
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1 week ago | 
paymentsjournal.com | Wesley Grant
Crypto exchange Coinbase will launch the x402 payments mechanism, which leverages the existing HTTP “402 Payment Required” status code to facilitate instant stablecoin payments. the protocol allows APIs, apps, and AI agents to conduct transactions during web interactions with minimal code integration. This means humans and AI agents can exchange digital assets as easily as they exchange data.
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1 week ago | 
paymentsjournal.com | Wesley Grant
Splitting the bill just got easier for Samsung Wallet users. Soon, they’ll be able to send money by simply tapping their phones. After building the functionality with Visa and Mastercard, Samsung will roll out a tap-to-transfer feature for U.S. users in the coming weeks. It will enable users to transfer money from a debit card in their Samsung Wallet to a card stored on the recipient’s device—even if that card is held in competing digital wallets from Apple and Google.
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1 week ago | 
paymentsjournal.com | Wesley Grant
Bitcoin has dramatically altered the financial world over the past decade and a half. However, the blockchain that underpins the most dominant cryptocurrency in the world can process only five to seven transactions per second. In contrast, an impending update to Solana will allow the blockchain to process roughly one million transactions per second.
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1 week ago | 
paymentsjournal.com | Wesley Grant
PayPal will launch its first mobile wallet in Germany as part of its strategy to capture a greater share of in-store payments. At checkout, consumers can access the wallet through PayPal’s app and tap-to-pay at merchants that accept Mastercard contactless payments. The app will also provide a unified view of both online and in-store transactions. PayPal hopes to differentiate its digital wallet by offering cashback incentives when users make contactless payments at select German retailers.
