A federal appeals court on Thursday threw out a massive agreement initially reached four years ago over card-network interchange and acceptance rules, drawing a sudden veil of uncertainty over crucial legal matters much of the payments industry had thought were all but settled. In a 41-page opinion studded with sometimes …

The U.S. rollout of EMV is just one chapter—albeit a major one—in an unfolding international payments story, but another one is taking the stage that could have important implications both for faster payments and cross-border transactions. SWIFT, the Belgium-based international financial-messaging organization, announced on Tuesday that 73 financial institutions worldwide …

Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday joined the mobile-payments race in earnest by announcing it is making near-field communication capability available on Microsoft Wallet for in-store transactions. The wallet works with Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system. The new payments feature is limited for now to members of Microsoft’s Windows Insiders program “in …

MasterCard Inc. on Monday is releasing a new policy aimed at speeding the testing and certification of EMV chip card terminals at U.S. merchant locations. The policy change, which the Purchase, N.Y.-based network says will cut test time to a few hours from as much as a couple of weeks, …

Even the most fervent advocate of EMV would have to admit the U.S conversion to chip cards has been a rocky one, especially for merchants. On Thursday, Visa Inc. announced a four-part plan it clearly hopes will remedy at least some of the more acute headaches, including certification backlogs and …

Long-time payments players who like to scoff at Bitcoin as an unproven payments instrument will have to reckon with the robust vote of confidence buyers and sellers of the 7-year-old digital currency have given it over the past few days. Bitcoin’s U.S. dollar value breached the $700 level late Sunday …

Forecasters have long predicted that the U.S. payments market’s move to EMV chip cards for in-person transactions will drive criminals into e-commerce fraud. Now data is emerging to show the nuances these fraudsters are exploiting, and how the rise in online fraud is hardly limited to the U.S. market. In …

The payments industry may never know for sure what prompted Visa Inc. to back off on a potentially lucrative new fee aimed at issuers planning to defect to other networks. But a clue to the decision emerged Wednesday when U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin’s office issued a statement celebrating the move …

When the Merchant Customer Exchange LLC announced last month it is postponing a rollout of its CurrentC pilot in Columbus, Ohio, observers suspected the news did not bode well for the merchant-controlled mobile wallet. On Monday, those suspicions were confirmed as MCX told CurrentC account holders in an email that …

Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., the author of the fee-capping Durbin Amendment, is well-known as a champion of merchants, but now he’s taking up the cause of small banks and credit unions. Durbin on Tuesday sent a letter to Visa Inc. chief executive Charles Scharf asking for information about a new …