Google Inc.’s entry in mobile payments and marketing, which the online search titan unveiled last Thursday, swept many observers off their feet with its comprehensive roundup of key players but also left a number of crucial questions unanswered. Experts agree, though, that the uncertainty swirling around these questions only underscores …

The bubbling person-to-person payments market boiled over Wednesday when mega banks Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Wells Fargo & Co. announced a joint P2P service dubbed clearXchange. While currently limited to the banks’ customers, clearXchange could be integrated with other P2P systems, and possibly even become …

  PayPal Inc. is dropping any pretense of not pursuing point-of-sale payments directly. The eBay Inc. subsidiary now promises that it has new services coming for paying at physical locations using smart phones. Third-party software developers for several years have been designing various apps that have blurred the line between …

  The world’s airlines are seeing less fraud these days in their online bookings, thanks to more experience with Web-based ticket sales and wider usage of fraud-fighting tools, according to a study released on Wednesday. Overall, online fraud for air carriers dropped 31%, from $1.7 billion to $1.4 billion, between …

The telecommunications companies that own the Isis mobile-payments joint venture have apparently given up on the idea of creating their own merchant network and instead are redirecting their efforts on a mobile wallet, according to a published report. If confirmed, the Isis move means that the existing payment card networks …

  Why Prepaid Cards Need Marketing TLC Regulation, public ignorance about prepaid cards, and negative publicity worry prepaid card executives, according to a recent survey. Researchers from Boston-based Aite Group LLC polled 24 senior executives during March’s Prepaid Expo USA conference in Orlando, Fla., and asked them to rate their …

  Lauri Giesen   Merchant acquirers and their vendors have always used technology in their long-running war against chargebacks, but today’s weapons and tactics are getting more sophisticated. Knowing when to retreat remains an important way to control costs.   Chargebacks: few words are dreaded more by retailers and merchant …

  Components Jane Adler The 40-year-old automated teller machine is hardly thought of as a springboard for innovation. Yet new technology is giving rise to a raft of services that promise to bring renewed purpose to the humble bank machine.   Now 40 years old, the ATM would seem to …

  Cover Story Mobile-payment schemes proliferate but innovations abound in all corners of the new world of electronic-payment systems competing for consumer and merchant adoption.   By John Stewart, Jim Daly, and Linda Punch       We’re putting on weight. First published in 2009, Digital Transactions’ Field Guide to …

  Networks   Linda Punch In 2006, the No. 2  card network went public, untethering itself from decades of bank ownership. Has it worked?   What a difference an IPO can make. In the five years since it offered its stock to the public, MasterCard Inc., the world’s second-largest card …