The past two years have been good to U.S. stock market investors. Although down slightly from 2023, the SP 500 ended 2024 up 23.3%, and the Nasdaq gained 28.6%, according to Charles Schwab. And the Russell 2000 small cap index rose 10%. The so-called “Magnificent 7” stocks — Alphabet (GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), Meta (META), Microsoft (MSFT), Nvidia (NVDA) and Tesla (TSLA) — had impressive but varied returns in 2024. Not surprisingly, Nvidia, one of the largest companies in the world and the hottest stock of 2024, topped the group easily with a 171.2% return last year, but two other stocks fared better

Payments FinTech Airwallex has launched a partnership with Discover Global Network.The collaboration, announced Monday (March 17), lets Airwallex merchants accept Discover, Diners Club and other domestic scheme cards as a payment method.“Our collaboration with Discover Global Network reflects our dedication to broadening payment acceptance for businesses worldwide,” Kai Wu, chief revenue officer for Airwallex, said in a news release.“By enabling Discover and Diners Club International Card transactions, we are providing merchants with more choices to meet their customers’ preferences, ultimately helping them scale internationally and drive growth.”According to the release, Airwallex merchants can now accept these cards throughout multiple regions including Australia, Europe, Hong Kong, Singapore and the United Kingdom.“In doing so, businesses may experience reductions in cart abandonment and spikes in customer satisfaction due to an enhanced checkout experience that enables them to pay with their preferred cards,” Airwallex said.And card choice can be critical, as research by PYMNTS Intelligence has found. As noted here last fall, “70% of consumers consider the availability of their preferred payment method to be very or extremely influential when choosing an online store. This preference appears to be a driver of cart abandonment rates across online platforms.”Online marketplaces appear to have a competitive advantage in this area, the research found, with 53% of consumers arguing that online marketplaces are the best at offering their preferred payment methods.“In contrast, only 22% of consumers hold the same view about brand websites,” PYMNTS wrote. “This disparity may explain why brand websites experience higher cart abandonment rates, with an average of eight abandonments in the last 30 days compared to six on retailers’ sites and seven on online marketplaces.”Additional research found that 60% of middle-market merchants struggle with the user experience during checkout, with slow checkout times and abandoned carts ranking among their most common headaches.Meanwhile, Airwallex last month launched a partnership with business services provider Vistra, integrating Airwallex’s business account and embedded finance products into Vistra’s platform.“Through this integration, Vistra’s clients can now execute on the two most important tasks of operating internationally using its platform, establishing an entity and enabling the entity to transact by way of opening a global business account,” the companies said in a news release.In addition, Vistra customers get access to “the competitive foreign exchange coverage offered by Airwallex’s 24/7 pricing,” the companies added