Fears of catching coronavirus during the payment process has given a sharp boost in usage and awareness of contactless payments since the pandemic began, according to a new survey from Mastercard.
Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga says he is certain that science, medicine and innovation will lead the world out of the coronavirus pandemic, but there is little indication of when that will happen.
Like other businesses, hospitals have been forced to make instant emergency changes because of the coronavirus. But many hospitals are concurrently getting a rush of demand for service with an unclear revenue stream.
"We're now in a different world," Stephen Squeri, chairman and CEO of Amex, said during the card brand's first-quarter earnings call.
Discover and Sallie Mae are the latest to report a surge in forbearance requests as households struggle with job loss and other hardships resulting from the coronavirus pandemic.
Merchant acquiring is a very face-to-face, sales-oriented business. And that culture has to change before any acquirers can convince their clients that they know how to adapt to the coronavirus pandemic.
Due to the U.K.’s coronavirus lockdown, many British people are socially isolated in their homes, and rely on friends to get their groceries for them. They face the problem of how to reimburse people for their expenses, since cash is no longer acceptable.
Businesses have turned to workarounds to accommodate the coronavirus’ impact on brick-and-mortar stores, emergency measures that will likely become permanent in order for these businesses to survive into the future.
Discover transitioned all of its 8,000 U.S.-based call center personnel to work from home within a matter of days after the U.S. declared a national emergency on March 13. By March 20, Discover had 95% of its agents working from home using a thin-client device to emulate their call center desktops.
Fast-moving payments innovation was already threatening comfortable connections between consumers and businesses before the pandemic turned the trend into an outright crisis.