Whatever their personal feelings are about marijuana usage, the growth of the legal cannabis industry in many states will force bankers and payments executives to examine the business prospects of serving that industry, according to an executive with a regional automated clearing house association. While marijuana remains illegal under federal …

Data breaches are in the news constantly, but they appear to have no long-term effect on consumers’ use of payment methods. Breaches might, however, spur some consumers to switch hospitals, according to researchers. “Payment attitudes and payment behaviors are very, very sticky,” says Claire Greene, a payments analyst at the …

Retailers organized by the National Retail Federation and the Merchants Payments Coalition are scheduled to descend on Washington, D.C., on Wednesday to urge Congress to preserve the Durbin Amendment within the ever-controversial Dodd-Frank Act. One close observer of the political and banking scenes, however, believes the amendment will survive despite …

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau confirmed last week that it will extend the effective date of its planned rule governing prepaid accounts by six months, until Oct. 1, and indicated it would consider a further extension. The embattled bureau also said it would revisit “at least two substantive issues” in …

Boosted by the addition of two big U.S. credit card programs and its June 2016 acquisition of Visa Europe, just about every operational metric that matters increased by 20% or more for Visa Inc. in the quarter ending March 31. The major exception was U.S. debit, which grew in only …

Still smarting from the loss of its big cobranded card and acceptance relationship with Costco Wholesale Corp. last June, American Express Co. managed to beat analysts’ earnings estimates in the first quarter and said it has planted the seeds for future growth. As an example, AmEx said its efforts to …

U.S. Bancorp, owner of the big merchant acquirer Elavon Inc., generated 36% of its first-quarter non-interest income from payments, according to the Minneapolis-based company’s first-quarter earnings report released Wednesday. U.S. Bancorp reported $849 million of its total $2.33 billion in non-interest income came from payment sources such merchant fees, interchange …

About 60% of the nation’s approximately 450,000 ATMs can now accept EMV chip cards, according to industry executives familiar with the years-long process of transitioning from magnetic-stripe cards. “We look at true chip transactions that are coming from terminals,” says Bruce Owens, vice president of product for the North American …

Automated clearing house volume grew by more than 1 billion transactions in 2016, ACH network governing body NACHA reported this week. Herndon, Va.-based NACHA says traffic on the network, which connects virtually all U.S. financial institutions, hit 25.6 billion transactions, up 5.3% from 2015. That grand total includes on-us transactions. …

China-based Ant Financial Services Group, which has a deal to buy MoneyGram International Inc. for $880 million, on Wednesday fired back at Euronet Worldwide Inc. as the two firms fight for the No. 2 U.S.-based wire-transfer provider. Euronet last month submitted an unsolicited $1 billion bid for MoneyGram and has …