Bitcoin vault provider Xapo Ltd. is days away from sending debit cards backed by the digital currency to consumers with registered Xapo Bitcoin accounts. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup, which is incorporated in Hong Kong, also raised $20 million in a recent investment round, bringing its total investment bounty …

The decision by JVL Ventures LLC to rename its Isis mobile-payments company may have been the easy part. Actually scrapping the brand and replacing it with a new name and logo will be much more challenging, experts say. “It’s a huge rebranding exercise,” says Nick Holland, who follows mobile payments …

Like their brethren in Colorado, the new marijuana stores in the state of Washington will be operating mostly on a cash basis, but operators hope that the federal government eventually will remove obstacles preventing them from getting payment card merchant accounts and business checking accounts. On Monday, the Washington State …

It’s July, and what with the summer doldrums having set in, we thought it might be timely to review a few principles we’ve learned over the years about digital transactions. Some of you may well disagree with any number of these, and if you do, I hope you’ll email me …

Jim Daly For a time, it seemed like open-fare contactless smart cards might take over payments on America’s buses, subways, and commuter trains, but then along came smart phones and EMV. The only thing that moves slower than a bus stuck in a 5:00 p.m. traffic jam is the process …

The U.S. is in the throes of adopting chip cards, but the immensity and complexity of its payment card industry ensures the migration to chip cards is no easy task. The biggest issue is getting all merchants on board. By Kevin Woodward Naiveté is not a trait payment card industry …

Even people in the payments industry are confusing the terms, and that’s obscuring some important developments in mobile acceptance, says Scott Holt. The convergence of mobile payment and mobile-payment acceptance is interesting because it enables a true mobile-to-mobile transaction. Scott Holt is vice president of Roam Data Inc., Boston, Mass. …

The startup that popularized a cloud-based approach to mobile payments using near-field communication (NFC) on Monday opened to card issuers and mobile-application providers a developer platform that could make it cheaper and easier to include digital cards in mobile apps. The platform, from Austin, Texas-based SimplyTapp Inc., offers tools specific …

Recurring billing is now available from Amazon Payments, putting the online payment service from Amazon.com Inc. on more equal footing with competitors that already offer the feature. n And when consumers update their payment cards, such as to replace an expired card, the update applies to payments made to merchants. …

Technology continues to drive change in the way riders on America’s mass-transit systems pay fares. While a few agencies have cast their lot with contactless card systems that also accept general-purpose debit and credit cards with contactless chips, other systems are turning to smart phones as add-ons to existing fare …