Faster payments may be in the offing, according to the Federal Reserve, but that term refers to the speed of clearing and settlement. It doesn’t mean new payments methods will necessarily go mass market any more quickly. Take mobile payments, a form of digital value transfer based on smart phones …

Retailer J.C. Penney Co. Inc. announced it now accepts Apple Pay in its stores. The Penney store card will be available for use with Apple Pay, enabling cardholders to earn shopping points through JCPenney Rewards, the store’s loyalty program. Merchant processor Vantiv Inc. announced it has been selected by Columbia Bank, Tacoma, Wash., to provide …

PayPal Holdings Inc. made it clear on Thursday it isn’t done striking deals with banks and other payments companies. Only days after announcing a major partnership agreement with Samsung Pay, PayPal now says it will work more closely with JPMorgan Chase & Co. and the bank’s Chase Pay wallet. And …

Prepaid card provider Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. said its revenue for the second quarter ended June 17 totaled $463.1 million, an 18.4% increase from $391.2 million in the same period in 2016. The company’s loss of $6.4 million improved from the $11.3 million loss last year. Blackhawk said Target Corp. will be …

The U.K. Treasury Ministry has said it is prohibiting merchants from assessing surcharges beginning January 1. Surcharges could be as much as 20% for purchases like a flight, the ministry said in a press release. In 2010, United Kingdom surcharges totaled 473 million pounds ($617 million). “Rip-off charges have no place in a modern Britain and …

In a deal that follows months of partnership agreements with other payments companies, PayPal Holdings Inc. on Monday said its PayPal service will become available as a payment method in Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.’s Samsung Pay wallet. When it goes live, the link is expected to go a long way …

The stock market has had a pretty good run so far this year, but shares of publicly traded payments firms are doing even better than the overall market. A group of thirty payment-related stocks tracked by Chicago-based Barrington Research Associates Inc. posted a mean return of 23.86% for the first …

Mobile-wallet transactions in the United States grew 333% from 2012 through 2015, albeit on a relatively small base, according to data released Friday by the Federal Reserve. Wallets generated 1.3 billion payments in 2015, the Fed data show, versus 300 million transactions three years earlier. That robust rate of growth …

No law in the history of electronic payments has had more impact—or stirred more controversy—than Sen. Durbin’s debit card rules. With emotions running high, will it survive the next half decade? In 2010, the U.S. Congress succeeded in doing something other Western nations had long since done but had always …

The buy button, which only two years ago showed much promise on social networks, has been superseded by the need to accommodate mobile shoppers. They were once thought to be a new way to spur more online transactions as consumers amped up the time they spent on social networks. But, …