Driven by growth in government programs, corporate payroll cards, and health care, the network-branded prepaid card sector can expect its U.S. load volume to nearly quadruple from an estimated $120.2 billion last year to more than $440 billion in 2017, according to research commissioned by MasterCard Inc. The study, by …

Now that same-day clearing is coming to the automated clearing house network, payments players are starting to parse the impact the faster settlement time will have on emerging payment methods that rely at least in part on the ACH. While many payments executives are enthusiastic about the change, some experts …

Most of the public attention on online fraud centers on traditional merchants seeking to identify fraudulent orders, detect and prevent data breaches, and the like. But fraud also is a major concern for the online-game publishers and social networks that operate exclusively in the virtual world. Because of the unique …

Speculation has flowed freely about the effects of the controversial “Durbin amendment” on merchants, card issuers, and the payment card networks should the interchange-regulation measure become law. But data about how consumers would be affected are scarce. Javelin Strategy and Research, however, says research it conducted late last year, in …

As the young market for mobile payments on smart phones takes shape, industry players are scrambling to pair up with world-famous partners with massive numbers of consumer and business customers. Point-of-sale terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc., for example, is selling hardware for its PAYware Mobile application in Apple Inc.’s retail …

Non-bank threats to banking franchises like electronic payments are nothing new, but if a researcher is correct, banks and the card networks they built could soon find themselves under assault from a whole new batch of players that have found a niche in social networks and online gaming. “I don’t …

JPMorgan Chase & Co. burst onto the consumer mobile remote deposit capture stage in a big way last week when it unveiled an updated online-banking app for Apple Inc.’s iPhone and iPod touch that facilitates remote capture and, for added measure, person-to-person payments. The application makes Chase the biggest bank …

Evidence mounted over the past week of the interest at least some major e-commerce processors have in using mobile platforms to penetrate the physical point of sale. First came word that Bling Nation Ltd., a Palo Alto, Calif.-based mobile-payments processor that depends on contactless stickers, is working on an integration …

Although many U.S. merchants and processors have met Visa Inc.’s July 1 deadline for replacing unapproved point-of-sale software applications with ones that meet requirements of the Payment Application data-security standard, or PA-DSS, many non-compliant card-processing applications remain in the marketplace, Visa says. While Visa would not release numbers on compliance, …

The rich in merchant-acquiring market share got richer last year, but nearly everyone got a little poorer when same-store sales are the measure, according to the latest annual study of the acquiring industry by Mercator Advisory Group Inc. The top five acquirers processed 74% of U.S. general-purpose payment card charge …