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Merchant surcharges are in the news as retailers, large and small, look for extra revenue and consumers rail against their existence.
“Over the past few months, it feels like almost every place I eat at is adding a [3% to] 4% fee just for paying with a credit card,” read a November Reddit post. “I get that costs are going up for businesses, but this used to be rare, and now it feels...
Fraud is no longer a marginal cost of doing business.
Instead, it is a fast-moving, adaptive threat that cuts across eCommerce, digital payments, account access and identity, growing in frequency and sophistication as commerce increasingly shifts into digital and mobile channels.
What once appeared as isolated incidents now reflects systemic pressure on banks, merchants and networks,...
Middle-Market Confidence Splits in 2026 as Tariffs and Supply Chains Weigh on High-Uncertainty Firms
Uncertainty is no longer a background condition for middle-market firms. It is now a measurable cost center.
That was the central theme of “How Business Uncertainty Is Forcing a New CFO Playbook,” the latest installment of PYMNTS Intelligence’s The 2026 Certainty Project. Drawing on nine surveys of chief financial officers at companies in the United States with annual revenues between...
Job security may be improving across the U.S. workforce, but financial confidence tells a more divided story. “Wage to Wallet Index: Side Work Patterns in the Labor Economy” explores how roughly 60 million hourly workers earning $50,000 or less annually are navigating rising costs, uneven income timing and growing economic pressure. Higher-income, salaried professionals report improving financial...
As financial pressures intensify across the U.S., a growing number of consumers are shouldering an obligation that rarely shows up as a line item in household budgets: financial support for extended family members and friends.
Even as incomes fluctuate and expenses rise, helping others remains one of the most durable financial commitments American households maintain.
Supporting Others...
The OpenClaw story went viral for the wrong reasons. Headlines fixated on AI agents forming a religion, encrypting their communications and building their own social network. The spectacle was real. So was the distraction it created from the more consequential story underneath it.
OpenClaw, an open-source personal agentic assistant that links to any large language model through an...
Anchorage Digital now enables licensed international banks to access stablecoin rails for U.S. dollar cross-border transfers and settlement.
This capability is provided by the company’s new Stablecoin Solutions for Banks, which is a purpose-built offering under U.S. federal oversight, Anchorage Digital said in a Thursday (Feb. 19) press release.
Stablecoin Solutions for Banks brings...
Digital transformation is inherently disruptive. For legacy sectors such as automotive, adapting to a digital-first commerce model requires a period of recalibration as companies, partners and consumers adjust to new ways of buying and selling.
CarGurus’ fourth quarter 2025 and full year earnings call Thursday (Feb. 19) only underscored this reality. The company’s full year results...
In identity verification, who someone says they are across financial services can often depends on where they live.
In mature economies, financial identity is commonly anchored in banking relationships. Opening a bank account establishes identity, enables payments, and unlocks access to credit, savings and commerce.
But across large parts of the world, including Africa, the Middle East...
Subprime borrowers drove unsecured personal loan originations and balances to record highs, TransUnion said in a Thursday (Feb. 19) press release.
Unsecured personal loan originations reached a record of 7.2 million in the third quarter of 2025, according to the release, which highlighted findings from TransUnion’s Q4 2025 Credit Industry Insights Report. The company views originations...