Tag: credit card

March 18, 2024

Retail sales in January and February indicate a possible pull-back in consumer spending, which some analysts warn is due at least in part to burgeoning credit card debt that could continue throughout the year. Retail sales in November and December, […]

February 15, 2024

In the past few years, we’ve seen a total upheaval in the way consumers spend their money. The pandemic, a looming economic crisis, rising inflation and higher costs of living have contributed to a tumultuous and confusing time for consumers […]

October 2, 2023

Holiday shoppers this year may have less room on their credit cards, and little enthusiasm for making that worse. In July, 61% of U.S. consumers lived paycheck to paycheck, 2 percentage points more than a year ago, according to research […]

February 9, 2023

Online furniture and home furnishings retailer Overstock has partnered with Citi Retail Services to offer customers digital-first benefits and rewards through a co-branded Overstock Mastercard. “As a customer-focused online retailer, we’re always exploring new ways to better provide smart value,” […]

December 9, 2022

Card payments soared to 90% of total retail spending in 2021, with 82% of transactions on either on debit or credit card, up from 75% of transactions in 2020, according to the latest annual Payments Survey from the British Retail […]

March 11, 2022

The Merchants Payments Coalition (MPC) earlier this week sent a letter to the House Financial Services Committee calling on it and Congress to investigate what the trade association calls Visa and Mastercard’s anti-competitive dominance over the U.S. credit and debit […]

September 20, 2021

Payment processing has been viewed as a commodity like copper or crude oil. And like a commodity, choosing which payment processor has been a decision based on “lowest cost.” While that logic may have made sense when the credit card […]

January 31, 2020

How we shop and what we buy is changing. Store closures of established department stores or the sudden successes of new direct to consumer brands often feature in the press, but less attention has been paid to what lies under […]

January 17, 2020

Retailers, including J.C. Penney, Target and Amazon, have been investing in contactless payments, with varying levels of success. Going contactless within five years may sound like a stretch to some, but a report from London-based research firm RBR predicts that […]

January 2, 2020

From Nieman Marcus to Macy’s, StockX and Poshmark, retail data breaches have repeatedly made headlines for exposing consumers’ credit and debit card information. But while consumers may be watching their credit card and bank account balances for suspicious activities, another […]

September 20, 2018

Retailers have been fighting the swipe fee fight for over a decade now. And they’re still not happy. “The monetary settlement doesn’t solve the problem. Swipe fees cost retailers and their customers tens of billions of dollars a year and […]

July 13, 2018

When Costco moved its longstanding store-branded credit business to Citigroup, it banked on better customer perks to ease the transition. It was a bumpy road, however, as cards were sent out late and customers had trouble activating them. Two years […]

May 17, 2018

Ikea’s new card arrives at a time when private-label store credit cards are rapidly evolving. More retailers who hadn’t offered their own cards, such as Lucky Brand, are getting into the game, while retailers with established credit cards, such as […]

August 31, 2017

PayPal has announced the PayPal Cashback Mastercard, a new cash-back credit card exclusively for PayPal account holders that offers 2% cash back on online and in-store purchases where Mastercard is accepted, a PayPal press release stated. The card, issued by […]

June 12, 2017

It seems both retailers and shoppers are moving away from traditional credit cards at checkout in favor of store cards that offer loyalty perks or financing options. Particularly among younger demographics, 52% of Generation Z and 60% of millennials are interested […]

October 4, 2016

Costco’s complicated, complaint-riddled switch from an American Express-branded store credit card to a Visa Citi card may have been a big issue for the membership store’s customers, but it apparently wasn’t a problem for the company’s bottom line. Costco recorded […]

July 8, 2016

The transition to EMV technology for credit card transactions was supposed to be complete last October, but fewer than half of retailers report being in compliance thanks to delays in certification by the banking industry. Just 48 percent of retailers […]

April 5, 2016

Costco announced last year that it planned to end its sixteen-year relationship with American Express in favor of a new agreement with Citi to offer a new store-branded Visa Card. Now, that new “Costco Anywhere Visa Card by Citi” doubles […]

February 17, 2016

One of early 2016’s cyber-security incidents consisted in the Hyatt hotel chain disclosure that almost half of its global payment processing systems endpoints have been infested with malware, active for 6 months during 2015. As the Kasperky Lab blog pointed […]