Cover Story By John Stewart Putting the Silk Road and Mt. Gox disasters behind it, the Bitcoin train is picking up speed. But what’s the real destination? If you want to get an idea of how far Bitcoin has come, take a look at what people are buying with it. At …

Since 2012, investors have poured $407 million into Bitcoin startups, with three-quarters of that sum flowing into the cryptocurrency just this year, according to figures compiled by CoinDesk, a Bitcoin newsletter. But now at least one expert is expressing doubts that these investors will see much of a return—if any—on …

Remember host card emulation? You might have lost sight of this variant of mobile payments based on near-field communication amid the flood of publicity Apple Inc.’s SIM-based Apple Pay service generated this fall. But HCE never went away, and now Royal Bank of Canada is making a bid to put …

  Merchants using integrated point-of-sale systems and that process payments with First Data Corp. have a new data-security option if they use POS terminals made by VeriFone Systems Inc., which goes by Verifone. Atlanta-based First Data is now selling Verifone’s Secure Commerce Architecture service, which eliminates the flow of consumer payment …

The point-of-sale terminal market is at a pivotal juncture in its history. Upstarts such as Square Inc. and its imitators have shown small businesses that they can do just fine by using smart phones and tablet computers to accept credit and debit cards and dispense with costly, purpose-built payment hardware. …

Payments 3.0 What Is Apple Pay? Apple Pay sticks to Apple Inc.’s basic device-centric model, putting the functionality in the thing purchased from Apple and eschewing re-selling information about the buyer/user. As with any other iPhone or Mac (or the Lisa for that matter), the company’s profit comes from selling …

AcquiringBy Jim DalyVolumes have been written about how Apple Pay benefits, or doesn’t benefit, consumers, merchants, card issuers, and even payment networks. But what about merchant acquirers? Train a cold eye on the new Apple Pay mobile-payment service for Apple Inc.’s recently introduced iPhone 6 models and the upcoming Apple …

  Apple Pay made it famous, but the technology to mask card credentials isn’t new. Now, though, a battle is brewing over standards, fees, and just who gets to do the tokenizing. In the world of payments, having no value has become very valuable. The payments industry is quickly evolving …

Endpoint EMV adoption is a costly and lengthy process for financial institutions, but it can be managed with a methodical plan and a transitional approach, says Jamie Topolski. The migration to EMV in the U.S. has been hindered in no small part by the difficulty in identifying a compelling business …

  No doubt merchants and the payments industry understand the value of removing valuable cardholder data from merchant payment systems via tokenization. Doing so, however, may complicate merchants\' data-security practices and carry costs, suggests Avivah Litan, vice president and analyst at advisory firm Gartner Inc., in a blog post. Tokenization …