I. Opening: Observations from an Industry Veteran When I joined First Data in 2015, I had the opportunity to work deeply with VisionPlus, a card issuing system that processes hundreds of millions of cards globally. That experience fundamentally reshaped my understanding of card issuing—I thought I knew payments well, but the complexity and sophistication of VisionPlus far exceeded my expectations. Today, when I see Web3 entrepreneurs calling a few CaaS APIs, building a fronte

Possibly the Most Important Announcement in Payments Visa's September 30th announcement of its stablecoin prefunding pilot could be just another PR piece to window-dress what large payments companies do. Corporate comms teams love dropping buzzwords like "blockchain" and "digital transformation" , drawing some eyeballs, maybe supporting the stock price here and there. Or it could be the most important announcement in the company's history, writing a new chapter in the global

By - J. Michael Bradley # 1: This is the first of three articles in our “Deep Dive” part series on Card Issuing. Our “deep dive” formats...

There are currently close to 11,000 US-based fintech companies, ranging from early-stage startups to the world's largest and most...