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NewsBriefs

This article contains summaries of news stories recently posted under Joel Winteregg, Vyntra's CEO, stated that fraud preven-
Breaking Industry News on our homepage. For links to these and other tion and operational reliability must be combined rather
full news stories, please visit www.greensheet.com/breakingnews.php. than treated separately. The study underscores that while
instantaneous settlement retains value, consumer loyalty
increasingly hinges on reliability, governance and visible
safeguarding of funds and data. Researchers noted it is
clear that real-time capability isn't the sole differentiator;
trust and resilience are equally crucial.
Payments revenue growing, fostering
new opportunities
Five indicted over refund scheme According to Boston Consulting Group's 23rd annual glob-
leveraging POS glitch al payments report, global payments revenue is projected
to expand from approximately $1.9 trillion in 2024 to $2.4
A federal grand jury in Miami returned a 22-count indict- trillion by 2029. While growth will moderate to about 4
ment against five men, Michael Jerry Phanor, John Ngotho, percent annually over the next five years, the industry is
William Lopes, Armani Amado and Henry Nunez, for entering a "foundational reset" driven by agentic AI, digi-
orchestrating a nationwide payments fraud and money- tal currencies/stablecoins, fintech disruption, real-time
laundering scheme exploiting a glitch in POS systems that A2A payments and cost-transformation imperatives.
enabled bogus refunds.
Latin America is expected to lead growth at 7.9 percent
According to charging documents, the group leveraged per annum, while North America trails at 3.4 percent.
"split-tender" purchases (two debit cards for one pur- Payments-focused fintechs posted 23 percent annual rev-
chase), then manipulated the refund process by allowing enue growth and accounted for $176 billion in revenues
the first card to be credited while delaying or subvert- last year. Real-time A2A volumes rose 40 percent globally
ing the second card refund (wrong card, incorrect PIN or in 2024, now representing about a quarter of digital retail
feigned bank calls), triggering repeat refund logic and is- payments and exceeding 50 percent in markets like Brazil
suing multiple credits to the first card. and India.

Don Apgar, of Javelin Strategy & Research, posited the op- The report emphasizes that growth will come less from
eration was likely an inside job, targeting one or a few retail traditional levers and more from integrating new technol-
chains using the same POS software. After refunds hit im- ogies into business models, transaction flows and operat-
mediately via new real-time payout rails, the conspirators ing platforms
withdrew funds quickly; law-enforcement traced at least
$1.5 million in fraudulent credits. The scheme spanned Holiday shoppers to spend over $250 billion online
dozens of locations including Miami, Tampa, New York, Consumer online spending in the United States for the
Chicago, Phoenix and Southern California. Some of the holiday season this year is forecast at $253.4 billion, up 5.3
defendants flaunted luxury lifestyles online under the percent year-over-year, according to Adobe Inc. Analytics.
moniker "Money Grows on Trees." Ten days this year are projected to exceed $5 billion in dai-
Consumers put security over speed ly online sales, up from seven days last year. Cyber Week
in payments, Vyntra finds will drive 17.2 percent of total online spending, roughly
$43.7 billion.
A study from transaction-intelligence firm Vyntra revealed
that consumers prioritize trust, resilience and transpar- Cyber Monday remains the biggest online shopping day,
ency over speed in payments, challenging common indus- expected at $14.2 billion, while Black Friday is projected at
try assumptions that frictionless, ultra-fast transactions $11.7 billion. Mobile devices will dominate, accounting for
are paramount. The survey of over 1,000 adults in Europe 56.1 percent of the total ($142.7 billion) with an 8.5 percent
found that 66 percent prefer security over transaction increase. BNPL is expected to account for $20.2 billion, in-
speed, and more than half welcomed additional verifica- cluding $1.04 billion on Cyber Monday and $761.8 million
tion steps if they improved safety. on Black Friday.

On resilience, eight in 10 respondents said they'd consider
switching providers after repeated outages; more than half Also find us on Facebook,
expect downtime to be less than one hour per year, indi- LinkedIn & Twitter for the
cating near-zero tolerance for service disruptions. Trans- most up-to-date stories,
parency also ranked high: 90 percent said it's important can’t miss events and newest
to understand how providers safeguard funds and data. industry announcements.

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