The newness of mobile payments likely was a contributing factor to Amazon.com Inc.’s decision this week to pull the plug on its six-month-old Amazon Wallet. That’s the theory suggested by Brian Kilcourse, managing partner at RSR Research LLC, a Miami-based retail advisory firm. Amazon.com launched Amazon Wallet in July, selling …

The U.S. Supreme Court may have rebuffed merchants seeking to cut debit card transaction costs, but that doesn’t mean they’re entirely out of options. On Thursday, the Merchant Advisory Group, a Minneapolis-based trade group that counts big-box stores and airlines among its 175 members, released a 16-page white paper using …

Americans love to shop. Whether online, in a small mom-and-pop business, or at a big-box retailer, shoppers turned out in droves this past holiday season. From Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday for example, online sales were up 12.6%–a record week–according to the IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark. For the holiday season overall, …

Apple Inc.’s much anticipated Watch, which includes a near-field communication (NFC) chip for making contactless payments, will be protected by a four-digit PIN, reports Australian Web site CSO. Apple Watch users will need to enter the passcode to use Apple Pay on the watch, the site says. It remains unclear …

The number of anticipated wearable devices that can be used as payment devices has increased by one with the debut of the Wirecard Smart Band from processor Wirecard AG. Munich, Germany-based Wirecard is using host card emulation, a variant of near-field communication, in its devices. With HCE, banks and other …

Traffic on the automated clearing house network continues to climb at a steady clip as financial institutions and other users of the system mull over a proposal to speed up payments from next-day to same-day settlement. In the quarter ended Sept. 30, overall volume on the ACH grew 4.15% year …

News of a possible card-data breach at chicken-sandwich chain Chick-fil-A caps a year that saw a number of franchised businesses compromised and throws into relief what some experts say is the unique security vulnerability of the franchise business model. Franchised chains, in which so-called owner-operators run stores under a license …

The Gimlet Eye While we were putting together this month’s cover package observing the sixth anniversary of Bitcoin, it struck me that this bête noir of banking shares something in common with that other upstart in digital payments, Apple Pay. Yes, they are different in nearly every respect. For consumers, …

Cover Story By John Stewart Putting the Silk Road and Mt. Gox disasters behind it, the Bitcoin train is picking up speed. But what’s the real destination? If you want to get an idea of how far Bitcoin has come, take a look at what people are buying with it. At …

Two days before Christmas, Google Inc. quietly filed a federal lawsuit against Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc., alleging the card networks violated antitrust law by setting “supracompetitive” interchange rates from 2004 to 2012. The unusually sparse, three-page suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, asks …