The Fed will soon release its long-awaited report on faster payments. Will it help the U.S. catch up with other countries? They’ve been slow in coming, but faster electronic payments soon will be arriving in the U.S. The upside lies in the phrase “faster payments,” with various proposals calling for …

By Kevin Woodward Both QR codes and NFC have their backers and critics. But as mobile payments advance, which acceptance technology will own the future? Merchants and the payments industry alike are vying to encourage more consumers to use contactless payments as a way to displace cash, know more about …

By Peter Lucas With three more years to comply with EMV, and with the cost of chip card acceptance weighing on their balance sheets, some petroleum marketers are talking about going mobile-only. ExxonMobil, Phillips 66, Gulf Oil, Chevron. The list of oil companies rolling out or testing mobile-payment applications at …

With a forecast of 15 billion new devices as part of the Internet of Things potentially coming online as payments devices by 2021, securing these devices, whether they are cars, wearables, or appliances, is emerging as a top concern. “We are seeing a huge increase in inadequately protected devices,” Graeme …

A data breach at Rosen Hotels & Resorts last year could cost the company more than $2.4 million in payment card network fines and other expenses, according to Rosen’s insurance company, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

Part I of this three-part series outlined the development of the realization by the Fed’s payments task forces that payments are complicated, difficult, and expensive to change in order to make them safer and more efficient.  This installment deals with the growing concern about security threats that are shaping the …

This article is the first installment of a three-part series this week on what the Federal Reserve’s Faster Payment Initiative means to the payment economy in the U.S., and how the payments ecosystem might get to “yes” on fixing what’s broken and deploying what’s possible. This part deals with the …

• Payments Canada, which owns and operates that nation’s payment clearing and settlement infrastructure, has hired consulting firm Accenture to advise it on a multiyear program called Modernization, which is aimed at creating a faster-payments regime. • Payments-solutions provider ACI Worldwide said its network of more than 130 payment-service providers serving more …

• Payments-automation specialist linked2pay has added a real-time merchant-onboarding capability to its Bank Centric Payments platform, allowing independent sales organizations and other resellers enrolled with a sponsor bank to register, underwrite, and board merchants for card processing electronically and immediately. • Mobile-commerce provider Sionic Mobile said it is integrating its ION Commerce …

• Merchant acquirer Elavon Inc. has appointed Jamie Walker chief executive officer. A 16-year veteran of U.S. Bancorp, which owns the processor, Walker was most recently chief administrative officer of the bank’s Payment Services division, and before that served as Elavon’s chief financial officer. • A blog post from data-security …