The price paid for the dazzling convenience of swipe-and-pay and thumb-and-buy is the monstrosity of backroom complexity. The convenience of Venmo, PayPal, and Square hides the growing dependence on layers on layers of protocols, equipment, and technologies. Indeed, the flipside of clicking out your banking needs on your phone is …

Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since 2011, is resigning, according to a report on TheHill.com, a political news site. The CFPB’s only director since it was created, Cordray expects to leave the agency by the end of the month, the site said. Fashion retailer Forever 21 Inc. said it …

Chatbots, quick-response codes, and so-called invisible payments will spur digital-coupon redemption volume to $91 billion worldwide by 2022, forecasts Juniper Research Ltd. These three technologies will propel redemption as consumers increasingly become accustomed to them, says the United Kingdom-based research firm. For example, chatbots, a form of machine learning that …

ShopKeep, a provider of tablet-based point-of-sale equipment and services, announced an integration with online-information management service Yext Inc. The integration will allow ShopKeep clients to check and modify information about their businesses across platforms like Google, Apple, Facebook, Bing, and Yahoo. Point-of-sale terminal maker Ingenico Group released the Moby/8500 mobile …

Square Inc., which debuted more than seven years ago pursuing micromerchants with a free card reader, launched Square Register, a $999 point-of-sale system designed for larger merchants, it announced Monday. Square Register is a full-sized POS device that has merchant-facing and consumer-facing screens. Also available at $49 a month for …

Issuers, merchants, and processors all share the same dilemma when attempting to authenticate an online identity. They are bedeviled by personally identifiable information easily accessible to criminals that they can use to spoof authentic consumers. In response, Visa Inc. on Thursday announced the Visa ID Intelligence service, which it says …

Prepaid cards are still popular with Americans, but not quite as popular as in some recent years, according to new findings from Mercator Advisory Group Inc. A Mercator online survey of 3,011 U.S. adults in June found that 56% of respondents had purchased a prepaid card in the preceding 12 …

In anticipation of an upcoming PCI Security Standards Council specification for enabling PIN-on-glass transactions with consumer mobile devices, MagicCube released MC-Screen Shield, a back-end technology to help secure the PIN. PIN-on-glass technology—in which the PIN is entered via a display instead of using a dedicated PIN pad—has been available for …

Square Inc. will apply for a Utah industrial bank charter today, a move that will extend the merchant processor’s move into lending and one which could draw the opposition of banks. The bank will be capitalized with $56 million, according to The Wall Street Journal. The financial operation will be …

Popular with billers, but less so with consumers, electronic bill payment and presentment is enjoying a new lease on life thanks to mobile users. Since its introduction more than a decade ago, electronic bill presentment has been popular with billers eager to take advantage of the cost savings the technology …