The conditions for the widespread adoption of contactless payments using chip cards are in place, asserts a new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. But when that will happen and what will trigger it are unknown in the Fed report, “Tap to Pay: Will Contactless Cards Pave the …

The surprising revelation by J.C. Penney Co. Inc. over the weekend that it had ceased acceptance of contactless payments unmasked the little-noticed ability of contactless mobile wallets to work with point-of-sale technology that far predates them but which Visa Inc. wants banished. The blend of old and new has worked …

Apple Inc.’s forthcoming Apple Card is another push from the computing giant to move payments into a digital realm under Apple’s control, according to analysts. Apple last week announced the card, which bears a Mastercard Inc. brand and will be issued by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The product, which eschews …

Payment complexity, combined with a scarcity of engineering talent, makes a new functionality layer all the more urgent for merchants’ payment flows. “Orchestration” refers to software platforms and services that automate … business processes to help streamline and simplify operations management. By automating the configuration, management, and interoperability of disparate …

PayActiv Inc. will use the Visa Direct platform from Visa Inc. to offer real-time deposits of earned funds to its clients’ employees. The funds can be loaded onto a Visa debit or reloadable prepaid card. PayActiv also launched its own Visa-branded general-purpose reloadable prepaid card. Testing lab Q-Card Co. said …

As if the payments business wasn’t enough of an alphabet soup, QR codes are now vying with NFC for dominance in mobile payments. Which technology will win out at the point of sale? In the United States, unlike many other parts of the world, near-field communication has been the favored …

While global card expenditures will increase 80% to $45 trillion by 2023 from $25 trillion in 2017, growth in the United States will be slow compared to other regions because the U.S. is already a well-developed market, says RBR Research in its “Global Payment Cards Data and Forecasts to 2023” …

Unbridled enthusiasm for distributed ledgers has given way to a more sober assessment of the technology’s probable role in payments. A few years ago, evangelists for blockchain confidently predicted its widespread adoption to facilitate faster, more secure, and economical payment transactions.  The type of transaction didn’t matter. Whether it was …

So far, Visa Inc. has dominated the headlines regarding the U.S. conversion to contactless payment cards. Mastercard Inc., however, will soon be getting into the act. “In the U.S., contactless momentum continues to grow on both issuing and acceptance sides,” Mastercard president and chief executive Ajay Banga said Thursday. “We …

When JPMorgan Chase & Co. announced in November it would soon start mass-issuing contactless Visa cards, industry experts expected the move to at last kickstart a trend in the U.S. payments industry toward tap-and-pay EMV plastic. But while most experts thought Chase’s decision might stir smaller banks to follow suit, …