By John Stewart With Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. making headway with online merchants with their streamlined checkout services, it was only a matter of time before network rivals introduced their own versions. American Express Co. did just that Thursday, announcing what it is calling an “unwallet” to allow its …

America’s tardiness in adopting EMV chip card technology has long been known to contribute to rising rates of fraud here, but now it appears the country’s plans to convert to EMV are, ironically, causing pain overseas. Fraudulent cross-border transactions on debit cards issued in the United Kingdom increased 25% in …

While social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest develop so-called buy buttons for the ads they sell, third-party developers are looking at extending the same technology across not only social networks but apps, mobile sites, and even emails. One of the most aggressive of these developers, Santa Clara, Calif.-based XpressBuy …

The gold rush in payments-startup financing that began about a year ago is likely to be even bigger in 2015, according to the latest report from CB Insights, a New York City-based investment-research firm. Last year set a record for startup funding, with $2.23 billion pouring into new payments companies. …

When Acculynk Inc. introduced its Payzur person-to-person payments service two years ago, it saw it as a way of leveraging the company’s virtual PIN-pad technology along with PIN-debit networks to enable faster, guaranteed payments between individuals. n Last month, MasterCard laid down a gauntlet with its MasterCard Send, a back-end …

Now that companies like Dwolla Inc., Facebook Inc., Microsoft Inc., and Square Inc. are making headlines with actual or expected services for a booming person-to-person payments market, financial institutions are scrambling to come up with solutions for their customers. One popular option is to leverage the automated clearing house network, …

By John Stewart The digital currency Bitcoin has attracted plenty of headlines, and has even gained enough of a foothold economically to prompt regulation, with the state of New York introducing the first BitLicense last week. But while the Bitcoin concept may be spreading its wings, the Bitcoin user base …

By John Stewart As participants in the 40-year-old automated clearing house network get ready to implement same-day clearing capability, network growth continues to percolate, according to the latest numbers from NACHA, the Herndon, Va.-based rules-setting organization for the ACH. Transactions totaled 4.72 billion in the first quarter, an increase of …

By John Stewart Dwolla Inc. announced Thursday morning it is eliminating its 25-cent transaction fee, effective immediately, on all transactions types. The fee, which has applied to transaction values exceeding $10, is typically paid by the receiver of the money. Des Moines, Iowa-based Dwolla processes person-to-person payments as well as …

By John Stewart Wednesday’s announcement by MasterCard Inc. that its MasterPass digital-payments service has signed up home-furnishings and décor e-retailer Wayfair, along with several Wayfair properties and mobile apps, threw into relief the progress the two giant general-purpose card networks are making in e-commerce and in-app payments. Once the province …