Despite being exempt from pending debit card interchange regulations, small banks seem to be convinced that their revenues are about to take a hit and are planning to raise account fees or reduce access to debit cards to compensate, according to survey results from the Independent Community Bankers of America. …

First Data Corp., one of the largest merchant processors in the country, said on Monday it will offer an Internet PIN debit option to its merchant clients starting some time in the second quarter. The option will be available to the company’s 300,000 merchants that derive at least some of …

The Electronic Transactions Association on Thursday released what it called “guiding principles” that would govern how payment card networks communicate with and implement operational changes that affect merchant acquirers. The guidelines ask the networks to release changes to interchange schedules and operational rules just twice a year and give processors …

In a move that could open up a significant chunk of the desktop market for digitized check processing, Panini North America this week introduced what are apparently the first check scanners inherently capable of working with Apple Macintosh computers. The development “opens up a heretofore unreachable segment for remote deposit …

Visa Inc. on Wednesday said it will relieve merchants outside the U.S. of the requirement to validate compliance with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) if the merchants process at least three-quarters of their Visa transactions from chip-enabled terminals. In a busy day at the world’s largest payments network, …

The bane of payment cards and to a lesser extent demand-deposit accounts, identity fraud took less of a toll by some measures in 2010 than it has in the seven preceding years, according to new findings from Javelin Strategy & Research. Javelin’s annual study found that 3.5% of U.S. adults …

The payments industry’s long struggle to bring person-to-person payments to a mass market reached a new milestone in recent days with the addition of real-time settlement. Under an agreement announced late last week, the NYCE Payments Network LLC will offer CashEdge Inc.’s Popmoney person-to-person payments service to its financial-institution clients, …

A philosophical turn by the Federal Reserve Board, having to do with the definition of a “payment card network,” has already raised questions for PayPal Inc. and could have major implications for a wide range of other alternative-payment systems. “It’s a huge issue,” says Conrad Sheehan, chief executive of mPayy …

ProPay Inc. this week announced a mobile-payments product that lets consumers communicate with as well as pay merchants from a smart phone whether they are in the store or just nearby. The application, which ProPay calls Zumogo, works with a handful of restaurants in the company’s home state of Utah, …

It’s bad for consumers and bad for the payments industry, but the Durbin Amendment that imminently will upend the U.S. debit card market still presents some opportunities for MasterCard Inc., according to the No. 2 payment network’s president and chief executive, Ajay Banga. Specifically, MasterCard could well pick up new …