Debit cards remain the fastest-growing payment devices and they seem likely to endure a possible economic slowdown better than credit cards, according to a new report from TowerGroup Inc. Nevertheless, financial institutions have a propensity to pump out many more debit cards than consumers want. According to the report, “Crediting …

A Silicon Valley startup that allows online buyers to receive products free if they buy something from other vendors has signed up 1,400 merchants and expects to have 10,000 on its roster within a year. “We enable multimerchant commerce,” says Alex Rampell, founder and chief executive of TrialPay Inc., which …

The already competitive world of electronic bill payments heated up this week with the announcement that wire-transfer leader The Western Union Co. and payment-technology provider Yodlee Inc. together will provide online bill-payment services, including expedited bill payments. Their pitch: direct access to more than 4,000 utilities, financial institutions, mortgage companies, …

In a move that could give it a big boost in signing up banks to issue cards on its network, Discover Financial Services Inc. on Tuesday announced a deal with TSYS Inc. under which TSYS clients will be able to issue Discover credit and prepaid cards and use TSYS for …

Bill Me Later Inc. will work with two to three merchants starting next month to test an extension of its online, credit-based payments service to the physical point of sale. If the test yields good results, the Timonium, Md.-based processor will likely launch a commercial service by the middle of …

Data Insecurity Part 8 Few payment innovations have produced the stark schizophrenia that we are experiencing with mobile commerce. Normally somber business types are rubbing their hands together at the prospects of reaching consumers on a one-to-one basis, online, all the time, anywhere they happen to be. Meanwhile, typically apprehensive …

A leading retailer trade group on Thursday called for the payment card networks to stop forcing merchants to store credit card numbers, in effect challenging banks and the networks to take more responsibility for preventing data thefts. In a letter to the PCI Security Standards Council, an organization the networks …

A merchant trade group and at least one bank card network are exchanging fire again this week over the fees merchants pay to accept cards. Triggering the skirmish this time was a press release and report prepared by the Merchants Payments Coalition as a follow-up to a July 19 Congressional …

As fear of fraud climbs at electronic-funds transfer networks along with PIN debit traffic counts, the networks are adopting a variety of technologies to detect fishy transactions. The latest is Pulse EFT Association LP, a Houston-based unit of Discover Financial Services Inc. Pulse on Tuesday announced it is rolling out …

The Sept. 30 deadline for large merchants to certify compliance with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard, or PCI, passed quietly over the weekend with an estimated half of so-called Level 1 merchants meeting the card industry's guidelines for protecting card data from fraudsters. And, according to experts contacted by …