Less than a month after electronic gift card provider Gyft announced it was selling Wal-Mart Stores Inc. gift cards, they no longer are available. According to a report on Coindesk.com, a digital-currency news site, Gyft stopped offering Wal-Mart gift cards on April 13. Gyft provides electronic gift card services for …

In the wake of Bitcoin’s continuing problems with price volatility and unstable processors, the future of virtual currencies got even cloudier over the past week on news that the Royal Canadian Mint plans to sell its MintChip digital-currency system.   Rumors that MintChip was on the block had been circulating …

Don’t let all the latest data-breach news distract you from one overriding fact: PCI is securing more and more card data from hackers, says Bob Russo. Some in the security business amplify these breach episodes to disparage their competitors and leverage fear to generate new sales pipelines. Bob Russo is …

Though it has attracted fervent enthusiasts, Bitcoin in the end offers less than meets the eye, says Eric Grover. For an electronic-payment system, the lack of central accountability is a flaw, not a feature. Eric Grover is principal at Intrepid Ventures, Minden, Nev. Reach him at eric.grover@intrepidventures.com. Bitcoin mania is …

A new contactless payment scheme available from On Track Innovations Ltd. enables consumers to pay for fuel at the pump without removing their payment card from their wallets. n Currently, EasyFuel Plus is available in Europe and other international locations. OTI says plans to market it in the United States …

If you think NFC is the future of in-store mobile payments, think again. NFC is a technology, not a solution. The idea that mobile payments should replicate the old card-payment model is all wrong, says Rick Oglesby. Rick Oglesby is a senior analyst at Aite Group LLC, Boston. Reach him …

Integration of in-store, online, and mobile shopping makes for a much quicker and more convenient shopping experience. It’s what consumers are beginning to expect and demand. Too few ISOs have progressed beyond the basics of POS technology, says Rick Berry. Rick Berry is chief executive of American Bank Card Processing …

There will be no “one wallet to rule them all.” The phone itself is the new mobile wallet, not any one app. Mobile wallets are more about marketing than about payments, and a white-label approach will let banks and merchants keep control of the vital customer data they need, says …

So far, the passes have chopped an average of 15 seconds off drive-up service times for the close to 600 customers who have registered their devices for the program. “That’s huge for us,” Stephen Baclini, president of Rawson Food Service, which operates six Wendy’s stores on the island, tells Digital …

To drive innovation and adoption, providers should stay close to the pain points of their customers. To achieve mass adoption of mobile payments, retailers, banks, and vendors must be prepared to serve a radically different customer, says Souheil Badran. Souheil Badran is senior vice president and general manager at Digital …