These days, the payments business is all about mobile innovation. But, as ever, it’s also about adoption. How many of these players will crack that nut? If anything rules in the payments business, it’s adoption—the ability of a new payment service to win usage by consumers and uptake by merchants. …

Five big players are slugging it out to win what has proven to be all-too-elusive: consumer and merchant adoption. Here’s a close look at the Big 5’s strengths and weaknesses. (Editor’s Note: This is the first part of a two-part examination of the current landscape for mobile payments. Look for …

It isn’t often that a municipality is recognized for its work in the payments space. But that’s what happened Tuesday when NACHA, governing body of the automated clearing house network, gave a New York City department its George Mitchell Payments System Excellence Award for transforming the city’s decentralized, inefficient and …

By Jim Daly Continuing its effort to get a massive data breach behind it, discount retailer Target Corp. announced Wednesday a $19 million settlement with MasterCard Inc. to compensate banks and credit unions for the fraud and card-reissuance costs they incurred for their MasterCard-branded credit and debit cards affected by …

A real-time payments system featuring tokenized transactions opened to all comers on Wednesday when Houston-based BBVA Compass Bank announced its connection with processor Dwolla Inc. is live for commercial use. “We’ve been in a live environment [with BBVA] for the last two to three weeks with friends and family but …

For centuries, consumer credit was extended via a bank loan, which overtaxed borrowers to pay interest from day one. Businesses, though, were extended a line of credit on which they drew as needed, and they only paid interest from the moment they used the money. Then, in the late 1950s, …

In less than one grim month, American Express lost two cobranded partnerships and a major court case involving its merchant-acceptance rules. But the 165-year-old payments company is far from finished. As cold as this winter was in most of the country, it was considerably chillier at American Express Co. The …

Chip card acceptance is far from ubiquitous six months ahead of the U.S. liability shift. As October’s big EMV liability shift approaches, just how ready are U.S. merchants to accept the chip cards that are so common elsewhere in the world? Estimates vary, but as of early spring the state …

By Jim Daly With the U.S. payment card industry’s eyes glued on the coming of EMV chip cards, the main standards body for card security is trying to remind merchant acquirers, merchants, and card issuers that there is more to security than simply embedding a chip into a piece of …

As Transact 15, the Electronic Transactions Association’s annual conference held this year in San Francisco gets under way, acquiring industry vendors and companies are releasing a bevy of news. Among the vendors making announcements is Clearent LLC, a payment-services company based in Clayton, Mo. Clearent says it will resell CardFlight …