Debit cards have been growing faster than credit cards for years now in the United States, but they'll be more important than ever for Visa Inc.'s growth in the near term as wary banks rein in lending. With the weakening economy, what had been slow credit card payment growth went …

MasterCard Inc. on Thursday announced a service it sees as a major step toward the ultimate commericialization of contactless payments via mobile phones. Intended primarily for the North American and European markets, the MasterCard Over-the-Air Provisioning Service is aimed at allowing any member issuer to readily personalize a handset for …

In the hunt for a trustworthy partner, a prepaid card issuer and payment card network probably couldn't do better than the Better Business Bureau. That's the theory, at least, behind the new MasterCard-branded TrustCard, a payroll card issued by Palm Desert National Bank that initially is being offered by the …

No. 4 payment card network Discover Financial Services will receive $2.75 billion from Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. through the settlement of a long-running antitrust lawsuit, Discover and the bank card networks announced yesterday. Discover, however, may actually pocket less than one-third of that amount after paying taxes and a …

Canada's financial institutions will start issuing microchip-embedded debit cards by the end of the year, the country's national electronic funds transfer network said on Tuesday. The rollout of chip cards, which follows a year-long pilot of so-called chip-and-PIN technology in the Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, area, will over the course of four …

While remote deposit capture continues to be one of the fastest-growing electronic payments products ever introduced, banks are still far too conservative in the way they sell the service, says Bob Meara, a senior analyst at Boston-based researcher Celent LLC. That could change soon, though, as resellers such as independent …

With the exception of the new back-office conversion application, or BOC, growth rates for the automated clearing house's electronic-check codes for transactions originating with paper checks declined in the third quarter. Those numbers might indicate one-time or seasonal blips, especially with the weakening economy, but they could also show that …

Merchant acquirers and independent sales organizations took a hit in Congress this year when a reporting provision passed, but other legal threats?along with possible opportunities?await next year. That's the word from payments executives and lawyers who stay abreast of Washington affairs and who spoke at an ISO conference Wednesday in …

Agents with independent sales organizations or even large merchant processors trying to sell prospective merchants on new point-of-sale technology can get the attention of decision makers, but only if they anticipate how a smart merchant will make a complex buying decision, a senior executive with the nation's largest restaurant chain …

The Accel/Exchange electronic funds transfer network said on Thursday it will launch a pilot in which it will switch PIN debit transactions originating at e-commerce stores. The pilot, which the Morris Plains, N.J.-based network will run with Acculynk Inc., a provider of PIN debit technology tailored for use online, will …