Token Specs: Curb Your Enthusiasm The three biggest card networks would just like everybody to calm down. As dramatic as their joint tokenization announcement was last month, key officials with Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc., and American Express Co. have been at pains to tamp down the far-reaching industry speculation the …

Kevin Woodward Tech players that have entered payments aren’t looking to make their living from transaction fees. That may put traditional acquirers on edge, but two can play this game. For as long as anyone can remember, electronic transactions have carried fees for processing. These fees have excited plenty of …

Some dragons are harder to slay than others, and a few are fire-breathing. Here’s our annual look at the industry’s fiercest beasts, this time ranging from the endless war over interchange to eager-beaver regulators to the woes of digital currency. By John Stewart and Jim Daly If payments were easy, …

  USConnect, a food-service network, has ordered 50,000 ePort vending-machine payment devices from USA Technologies Inc., making it the largest single order ever, says Malvern, Pa.-based USA Technologies. EPort devices enable vending machines to accept credit and debit cards and contactless payments. USConnect will supply the devices to its network …

  PayPal Inc., the financial services arm of marketplace eBay Inc., continues to work on expanding PayPal acceptance beyond e-commerce, and its decision last month to buy Braintree Payment Solutions LLC for $800 million is one part of that effort, eBay executives said Wednesday. EBay has been expanding the number …

Ammo for ISOs in the Tablet Wars Independent sales organizations are starting to feel squeezed by technology companies selling tablet-based point-of-sale solutions to merchants, according to terminal kingpin VeriFone Systems Inc. So VeriFone last month rolled out a tablet-based platform for its resellers that they can price and market to …

Steve Mott Two years after Google’s splashy mobile-wallet debut, there are more wallets than ever, even though Google and others have stumbled. What’s wrong with current wallet strategies, and what kind of future do digital wallets have? If things go according to unofficial reports, the readers of this article will …

Critics say state-by-state money-transfer licenses deter payments startups and entrench incumbents. Defenders say they protect the public. What’s really going on? By Jim Daly Christopher Ferro, who heads up legal and compliance operations at digital wire-transfer company Xoom Corp., was pleased. It was Sept. 5, and he had just opened …

Mark Horwedel Heavy costs, unrealistic deadlines, and a looming threat to hard-won Durbin rights are just some of the reasons. The bottom line is the chip card standard badly needs an overhaul. This question posed by the headline on this article seems to come up with increasing frequency these days, …

When it comes to payments, the United States might be considered the land of the gap, according to a Federal Reserve assessment issued earlier this month. The assessment is the first of a three-part research study aimed at spurring the modernization of U.S. electronic payments, which many public-sector researchers and …