Aided by an improving economy, credit cards staged a comeback in 2012, edging out debit cards as the key payment option at the retail point of sale, according to a new report from Javelin Strategy & Research. While debit cards held the greatest share of total dollar volume at …

  Fiserv Inc. executives expect the option to guarantee availability of funds loaded onto prepaid cards from a personal or business check using a smart phone to be a huge point of differentiation for Fiserv’s new Prepaid Source Capture service. Launched last week, the Brookfield, Wis.-based processor’s service enables consumers …

As they began their work, some Federal Reserve Board governors expressed uneasiness with the task Congress assigned them in 2010 through the Dodd-Frank Act: implement the debit card regulations called for in the sweeping law’s Durbin Amendment. In March, however, the Fed expressed enough satisfaction with its handiwork to declare …

Elizabeth Whalen Tech companies and processors are transforming tablet computers, notably Apple’s iPad, into mobile electronic cash registers of the future that do a whole lot more than simply payments. Four years ago—before the introduction of the iPad—Jason Richelson was trying to find a better point-of-sale system for his three-location …

Some billers have dismissed virtual cards because they assume the added interchange fees will increase their overall costs. Not true. Billers looking for a way to take payments through a multitude of channels while also controlling costs need look no further than the existing card infrastructure, argues Blair Jeffery. Blair …

Credit cards began staging a somewhat wobbly post-recession recovery in 2010 and 2011. But new figures from First Data Corp. and Visa Inc. indicate credit card charge volume is back to just about full health. In a mid-March investor presentation, Visa reported that U.S. credit card payment volume increased 11% …

E-commerce, better malware, and mobile devices are on the minds of fraudsters, according to Trustwave Holdings Inc.’s latest annual data-breach study. Chicago-based Trustwave, a leading data-forensics investigator and security vendor, based its report on 450 data breaches it investigated last year around the world. Hackers targeted payment card data in …

Gideon Samid • Gideon@bitmint.com Membership organizations customarily leverage their “numbers” to extract deep discounts from merchants. Now, the emerging digital-payment reality offers the same opportunity for ad-hoc assemblies of buyers. Suppose you are in the market for an iPad mini, and you find it in your favorite online store, priced …

Jane Adler With the daily-deals goldmine close to played out, companies like Groupon are hoping to use payments to streamline redemptions and kick revenues into high gear. But how many followers will they have? In the minds of many consumers these days, the daily deal is so 2011. If you’re …

New Visa Inc. chief executive Charles W. Scharf used his first earnings conference call with analysts Wednesday to offer an olive branch to U.S. merchants. Scharf’s comments came on the heels of an earnings and operational report for fiscal 2013’s first quarter that show strong U.S. Visa credit card growth …