The clearXchange payments service owned by five of the nation’s six largest banks on Monday announced a real-time payments service that includes not only its original person-to-person payments franchise but also business-to-consumer payments. Mike Kennedy, chief executive of San Francisco-based clearXchange, tells Digital Transactions News that the system is live …

Now that companies like Dwolla Inc., Facebook Inc., Microsoft Inc., and Square Inc. are making headlines with actual or expected services for a booming person-to-person payments market, financial institutions are scrambling to come up with solutions for their customers. One popular option is to leverage the automated clearing house network, …

New York State’s controversial BitLicense—the nation’s first regulations for virtual currency—are now final, and they’ve got some people on the cutting edge of payments worried about government interference. But Benjamin Lawsky, the official who oversaw the BitLicense’s development, said Wednesday that he hopes intelligent regulation can help modernize what he …

The federal government now expects processors to be payments cops, says Andy Phillips, chief executive of an ISO that found out the hard way. Following the networks’ rules is no guarantee the government will think you’ve done enough. In the new world of payment processing, I’m now a cop. I …

Rezzcard, a provider of payments services for tenants in affordable housing, has teamed with processor JetPay Corp. to offer a Visa-branded prepaid card, called the MAC card, as well as a mobile app, to tenants living in public, Section 8, tax-credit-subsidized, and workforce-housing developments. The Rezzcard app enables users to …

With Google Inc.’s announcement of Android Pay Thursday, the first major direct rival to Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay came into focus. While other Apple Pay competitors are already in the market or soon will be—handset giant Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and the retailer-controlled Merchant Customer Exchange LLC are expected to …

Google Inc. is betting its latest mobile payments incarnation—Android Pay—will work better than Google Wallet did. Announced Thursday at Google I/O, its developer conference, Android Pay is poised to compete directly against Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay, PayPal Inc., and the upcoming Samsung Pay for a piece of the burgeoning mobile-payments …

The U.S. Postal Service could generate as much as $1.1 billion in additional annual revenue after five years if it expanded its existing payment services. That’s according to a report from the USPS Office of Inspector General. But a hotly competitive market could dampen those prospects, experts say. Struggling with …

Merchants, whether they sell online or in stores, consistently have one bugaboo about their payment-processing service: They want it to be cheaper. Online retailers, in particular, which pay higher card-not-present interchange rates, can use some simple practices to make a dent in these costs, as outlined this week in a …

The reduced interbank fee of 5.2 cents contained in the same-day settlement plan approved this week by members of NACHA, the regulatory body for the automated clearing house network, is likely to go down better with major merchants than the 8.2-cent fee contained in the original proposal. “The level of …