NFC Stalwart Isis Preps for a Rollout Isis, the smart-phone-based payments machine owned by three big mobile-telecommunications carriers, has stuck with near-field communication (NFC) through thick and thin while other mobile-payments providers have either avoided the high-powered but demanding technology altogether—think PayPal—or scaled back their commitment to it—think Google Inc. …

Linda Punch Time was, regulators largely left independent sales organizations and other acquirers alone. Now, with a trio of major enforcement actions, the Federal Trade Commission is showing how those days are over. For entities that play such a key role in the acquiring industry, independent sales organizations have led …

By Jane Adler The Shanghai-based payments powerhouse has cut deals with players like Discover and FIS to boost issuance and acceptance share. Meanwhile, U.S. companies’ welcome in China isn’t so warm.Get ready. China’s giant payments network UnionPay is about to launch its first card for American consumers, marking a further …

Zach Harvey says it’s too hard to get Bitcoins, so next month his new company will start shipping its first machines intended to let ordinary consumers exchange cash for the controversial digital currency. The company, Lamassu Inc., is billing the tabletop device as “the world’s first Bitcoin ATM” and says …

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and EMV won’t be fully implemented in the United States for some time to come, but at least some foreign observers who have experienced nationwide deployment of the Europay-MasterCard-Visa chip card standard are starting to show impatience with EMV’s sluggish U.S. progress. Fearing a …

PayPal Inc.’s point-of-sale initiative, which has seen the e-commerce processor penetrate thousands of stores while stirring controversy with at least some incumbent processors, will focus on achieving “ubiquity” and solving consumer “pain points” for the next several years, eBay Inc.’s chief executive said on Wednesday. The initiative, which began early …

The complexity of federal and state regulation has some operators thinking twice, including Facebook and Microsoft, both of which ditched their currencies. By Linda Punch When federal prosecutors in May shut down digital-currency network Liberty Reserve on money-laundering charges, all eyes turned to other peer-to-peer digital currencies, such as Bitcoin …

In an action that appears to signal stepped-up scrutiny of non-bank prepaid card distributors by federal banking regulators, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Friday announced it is fining Achieve Financial Services LLP $110,000 and forcing it to pay at least $1.1 million in restitution to consumers. The FDIC also …

Elizabeth Whalen Merchants focus most of their attention on interchange when they think of card-acceptance costs, but now network fees and related charges are in the spotlight. Are such charges an expression of oligopolistic power? When MasterCard Inc.’s new digital-wallet fee takes effect this month, it will join a growing …

Linda Punch With law enforcement’s spotlight on Bitcoin and other digital currencies, a startup called BitMint hopes its approach will inject much-needed trust into the business. Developers of digital currencies are struggling to find the right mix of features to win over a mass market. One of the latest efforts …