Online-payments provider Braintree says 2014 was a banner year for the Chicago-based unit of PayPal Inc., with total transactions growing to 2.8 times the 2013 tally. In a blog post, chief executive Bill Ready also said that Braintree’s mobile transactions in the fourth quarter increased to four times the number …

  Despite all of the hype about mobile payments, consumer concerns about security, convenience and where they can use smart phones have yet to be addressed, finds a survey from The 451 Group. Of the more than 4,100 North American consumers polled in December, 84% cited security as the top …

Consumers are weary of dealing with the fallout from data breaches and want a better way to minimize their risk. The backers of Final, a new credit card with online-management tools that can set spending caps and produce virtual card numbers tied to specific merchants, hope to alleviate some of …

In the wake of an important Supreme Court decision early last week, Visa Inc.’s chief executive Thursday afternoon sounded a conciliatory note on the company’s often fraught relations with merchants and touted Visa’s digital-payments initiatives as a way of bringing more value to retailers in return for the fees they …

Now that the Federal Reserve has released its plan for faster payments in the United States, observers are applauding the effort while expressing some impatience with what they see as the central bank’s overly deliberate approach. “The Fed is indeed headed in the right direction, but it is a slow …

  Starbucks Corp. has proven that consumer apps for buying coffee are becoming more popular, and now convenience stores have joined in with c-store chain Wawa Inc. launching its mobile-payments and rewards app. To use the payment function of the Wawa app, which is available for iOS and Android smart …

In a blueprint released Monday for a faster and more secure U.S. payments system, the Federal Reserve called for industry task forces to form early this year and for a “framework” to emerge by 2016 to set rules for near real-time payments. The banking regulator also set out five broad, …

American Express Co. reported $182.5 billion in U.S. card-billed business in the fourth quarter, up 7.9% from $169.1 billion a year earlier, and discount-fee revenues increased 1.8% to $4.99 billion from $4.90 billion. The average worldwide discount rate, however, decreased three basis points to 2.45% of the sale. American Express …

Americans love to shop. Whether online, in a small mom-and-pop business, or at a big-box retailer, shoppers turned out in droves this past holiday season. From Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday for example, online sales were up 12.6%–a record week–according to the IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark. For the holiday season overall, …

Merchants battling debit card pricing and routing rules suffered another defeat on Tuesday. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a petition from a merchant group seeking to have the high court hear its arguments against Federal Reserve rules regulating debit card interchange and transaction routing. The move leaves intact a lower-court …