Visa Gives a Push to Prepaid Cards   If Visa Inc. could be personified as an illustrious 19th Century editor, he might be saying, “Go prepaid, young man.”   The No. 1 payment card network’s interchange schedule effective Oct. 1, the day new federal debit card interchange price controls …

  By John Stewart and Jim Daly   Having beaten the banks on debit card pricing, they’re now staking out positions on mobile payments and chip cards. This could be the start of the decade of the merchant in the business of consumer payments.       Who controls consumer …

  A startup called Openbucks this week introduced a service that lets consumers use merchants’ gift cards to buy goods online from other merchants. The Redwood City, Calif.-based company, which has been working for five months with gift cards issued by the Subway sandwich-shop chain, claims its “gift card payment …

  What Keeps ATM Execs up at Night?       Complying with new Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements and fighting fraudsters who put skimmers on their machines rank high on the to-do lists of ATM managers.   The findings come in a new report from Aite Group LLC …

  Capping a wave of recent acquisitions, non-bank ATM network owner and manager Cardtronics Inc. announced late Monday that it had struck a definitive agreement to buy Access to Money Inc., a retail ATM network operator with 10,350 U.S. machines under management. Houston-based Cardtronics will pay $21.2 million in cash …

Leading payment card network Visa Inc. on Tuesday announced three initiatives to spur adoption of so-called EMV contact and contactless chip cards and near-field communication (NFC) mobile payments in the U.S. Observers hailed Visa’s action, but noted that a full move to EMV and NFC mobile payments in the U.S. …

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  All Signs Point to Credit Cards’ Recovery   After getting KO’d in the recession, credit card usage is back on its feet. While card issuers are more cautious than they were a few years ago, consumers who have credit cards are using them more frequently, and they are spending …

  After taking a nasty hit in the recession, credit cards are back on their feet, though somewhat wobbly. Figures from First Data Corp., the largest U.S merchant processor, show that credit card usage is sustaining growth after returning to positive territory in early 2010. Data from the bank card …