By Jim Daly Legal U.S. marijuana sales grew 74% to $2.7 billion in 2014 from $1.5 billion the year before, but you wouldn’t know it by the payment card and other electronic payments generated by the budding industry, according to a new research report. Even though about 20 states have …

Chicago-based BMO Harris Bank on Monday unveiled a mobile app for cardless ATM cash withdrawals and claimed it has the nation’s largest network of ATMs configured for smart-phone-based withdrawals. Meanwhile, ATM manufacturer Diebold Inc. said it bought a Canadian software company as part of a strategy to offer more software-based …

Payments 3.0 The Numbers Seldom Tell the Story. Of all the statistics published about payments, none specifically provides an indication of whether or not banks are holding on to their payments franchise. One statistic, however, shapes the debate (or should): The total number of payments made expands no faster than …

When it comes to general-purpose mobile payments, PayPal Inc. is far and away the leader, having posted $46 billion in mobile charge volume last year. But recently, the mobile-payments spotlight has been trained on Apple Inc. with its new Apple Pay service, Google Inc. and the suddenly brightening prospects for …

Counterfeit fraud on Canada’s Interac debit cards fell 45% to a record low in 2014, and 80% of the fraud happened outside of Canada, according to new figures from Toronto-based Interac Association. The five-year slide in skimming-related fraud coincides with the rise of EMV smart cards in Canada as well …

Funding for small businesses has been an increasingly important source of revenue for independent sales organizations and other merchant acquirers, but they’re not the only parties that have noticed the market’s lucrative potential. Now, banking-technology vendors and even large merchants are getting into the game. Jack Henry & Associates Inc., …

By Jim Daly JPMorgan Chase & Co. reported Tuesday that 60,000 merchants use its in-house ChaseNet merchant-processing venture and as of January they were generating annualized charge volume of $16 billion. Merchants in the venture include United Airlines, the Marriott hotel chain, DirecTV, 1-800 Flowers, Groupon, Zillow, and Barnes & …

By Digital Transactions News Staff Gemalto NV, one of the largest manufacturers of SIM cards for mobile phones and a key vendor for U.S. payment card producers as the nation converts to the EMV chip card standard, suddenly has found itself in the middle of a spy scandal involving the …

Financial and marketing services company Mozido Inc. now is serving China through its acquisition of PayEase Corp., a China-based payment processor. Announced today, the acquisition makes Austin, Texas-based Mozido the owner of one of 22 licensed payment-processing companies in China. PayEase, which is headquarter in Beijing, provides in-app mobile payments, …

Orders for Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) smart cards rolled in for bank and payment processor Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) in the fourth quarter while rival Fiserv Inc. saw increases in its multi-faceted payments business. Jacksonville, Fla.-based FIS on Thursday reported $647.2 million in fourth-quarter revenues from its Payment Solutions Group …