Payments

Taxpayers Are Footing the Bill for Rich People’s Private Jet Flights

The super-wealthy are skirting the fees you pay for commercial airline tickets, while still reaping the benefits, a new report finds.

Twitter Is Working on Some Kind of Mysterious Subscription Feature

Twitter may be finally working on a way for you to monetize your shitty tweets without starting a podcast or putting a Cash.me link in your bio—that, or it’s launching a new tier of premium or ad-free accounts. As reported by VentureBeat on Wednesday, the revenue-hungry social network is indeed building some kind of subscription…

Facebook May Be Considering Changing Course As Libra Crypto Project Sails Towards Disaster

Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency project has been heading full steam at a global financial regulatory system-sized iceberg for a while now. But it might be trying to change course after finally realizing that the iceberg will win. Per a Tuesday report in the Information, sources say the Facebook-backed Libra Association will still roll out the product…

PayPal Holds Payments to Magazine’s Staff After Publisher Mentioned Article on Iran in Notes [Updated]

What happens when PayPal, the Treasury Department, and a New York magazine walk into a bar together? Nothing good! Jacob Plitman, publisher and CEO of NYC-based magazine Jewish Currents, says that PayPal held paychecks for nine of the publication’s staff and contributors this week after he listed “January plus Iran piece” as the purpose of…

Domino’s Tests Cashless Stores in Australia as the World Ditches Paper Money

Cash isn’t dead yet, but we’re getting close. Domino’s in Australia announced that it will trial cashless stores at five locations in the country starting today. Customers will be able to use credit cards, debit cards, ApplePay, Android Pay, PayPal, and Domino’s Instagift gift cards. But cash will no longer be an option for both…

The Best Apps for Sending Money, From Least to Most Annoying

If you’ve got a debt to pay, a bill to split or a reward to give, you no longer need to dig out your wallet or bother with notes and coins—your smartphone is perfectly capable of sending money to friends and relatives with just a few taps. But the apps that let you send the…

Why You Should Care If Apple Pay Comes to Websites

A report in Recode today suggests that Apple is planning to bring Apple Pay to websites later this year, which will let you buy stuff online with your iPhone. An incremental change to a marginally popular payment service doesn’t sound exciting, but it’s arguably the biggest payment move Apple has ever made. Apple Pay online…

Why Visa Having a Developer Platform Actually Matters

Earlier today, a very dull press release from Visa announced an actually important thing: the world’s largest payment processing network is opening up to developers. Yawn all you like, but this is big news. Payment processing is all the rage for a very simple reason: People spend an inordinate amount of money every day, increasingly…

LG’s Rumored ‘White Card’ Looks Like Another Smart Card Disappointment

In case you weren’t already inundated with payment options, LG apparently thinks you could use one more. A new leak suggests that LG is ready to enter the payments world, but unlike its biggest competitors Apple, Google, and Samsung, LG will not be using smartphone technology to power your payments. Instead, the company is making…

Chase’s Dumb New Mobile Payments System is Destined to Fail 

Mobile payments are all the rage right now! There’s the contactless magic of Apple and Android Pay, Samsung’s awesomely cool magnetic thing, and Chase’s system that lets you use a Chase card in a Chase-approved store, by simple scanning a QR code. Wait, what? Chase Pay is another digital wallet that Chase is hoping you…

PayPal Launches Service That Will Compete With Venmo, a Company It Owns

Do you like Venmo? Then you’re going to love PayPal.me, a new Venmo-like payment platform by PayPal, Venmo’s parent company. It works a lot like Venmo except, you know, it’s PayPal instead. It’s not quite as confusing as it sounds. PayPal.me is basically a streamlined version of its namesake that also makes it easy for…

Apple Pay will now work with PayAnywhere, a card reader that attaches to mobile devices to accept NFC and magnetic stripe payments. That means Apple’s contactless payment solution will now work in 300,000 more places in the US, and we’re one step closer to the walletless utopia. [9to5Mac] Contact the author at [email protected].

MasterCard’s Gonna Let You Pay With Your Face

Do you like your face? Then you’re going to love MasterCard’s new ID Check security system. The experimental feature uses your camera’s front-facing camera and facial recognition technology so that you can pay with your face. MasterCard thinks millenials will love it. The biometric identification system sounds kind of silly, but it’s definitely more secure…

Apple Pay Is About to Be Everywhere With a New Square-Built Reader

Get ready to pay with your iPhone at the flea market, because the company just announced a mobile Apple Pay reader built by Square. Apple also announced a whole host of new big box stores that will accept Apple Pay. And to top it all off: Passbook is now called Wallet. These three announcements together…

Google’s New Hands-Free Feature Will Let You Pay With These Magic Words

“I’d like to pay with Google.” Say that phrase at a shop’s register, and you could soon check out without even touching your wallet—or phone. It’s called Hands Free, and it comes on the heels of Google announcing its upcoming payments app, Android Pay, at I/O. With this hands-free method, it seems you simply approach…

Android Pay Is Google’s Plan for the Mobile Payments Future

We suspected that Google would announce a new payments system at I/O, and we were right. Enter Android Pay. Android Pay is an open-platform API that enables customers to make payments from their credit cards within an Android mobile app. To use it, unlock your phone like normal, place it in front of the data-slurping…

Stratos Card Review: This Smart Credit Card Is Still Too Dumb

Technology is a conquerer. The evidence can be seen in mounds of dead pagers, flip phones, and CDs. When companies and startups agree to kill something off, it’s usually not long for this world. But one piece of tech has become an unkillable cockroach—the credit card. Apple has Apple Pay. Samsung has Samsung Pay. Google’s…

Samsung Wants To Replace Your Credit Cards With These Clever Magnets

Your next Samsung Galaxy smartphone could have a neat trick up its sleeves. Just place your phone next to any ol’ credit card reader, and press a button to pay. That’s because Samsung just announced that it’s buying LoopPay—a company that figured out how to trick magnetic stripe readers to accept your money wirelessly. Does…

Apple Pay Could Be Coming To Small Businesses, Thanks To Square

Since it launched last month, Apple’s mobile payment system has been doing pretty well for itself. But the list of participating stores, while impressive, is dominated by big names. Thanks to plans to team up with Square, a credit-card processing service for small firms, that could all change. In its current guise, Square is (mostly)…

PayPal Will Give You a Two-Week Interest-Free Loan

PayPal’s latest service, Pay After Delivery, gives people up to 14 days to pay for the stuff they buy. This means you can get a two-week loan from PayPal to make a variety of purchases, at no extra charge from the online payment company (though the fine print notes that third parties might charge you).…