The Merchant Customer Exchange, a retailer-controlled mobile payment scheme, has given its service a name. Dubbed CurrentC, the service will not be available outside of testing until 2015. First announced in 2012, the long-gestating scheme aims to give participating retailers their own mobile-wallet service that eschews the traditional payment …

It’s May, and that means it’s time for our annual exercise to seek out and describe the payments players, apart from the big networks, that are rewriting the rules for the digital exchange of value. Capital One Financial Corp.’s bombshell announcement in February that it is offering to acquire Discover …

A major venture by some of the country’s biggest banks to launch a digital wallet using a platform from Early Warning Services LLC, news of which emerged early Monday, is likely to benefit from the banks’ technology resources. But it could be hindered by consumers’ entrenched preferences for major-brand wallets …

Creative, norm-breaking advances in payments can happen in the strangest places. Just ask BIM Networks, Discover—and the ACH. Another $13 billion poured into the top 250 fintech startups last year as investors doubled down on the business potential of disrupting staid financial-services providers and the moribund card-payments infrastructure. But where’s …

Churn is still the overarching theme in a dynamic market dominated by mobile options and eyeing digital currency. You can tell a lot about the dynamism of a market by how often its players turn over—how many new companies enter the market from year to year and how many fail …

Data-communications provider Transaction Network Services acquired R2G Services, a Chicago-based provider of a market-data and managed-hosting platform; terms were not disclosed. Payment processor Repay Holdings LLC, which private-equity firm Corsair Capital acquired in 2016, said it has a definitive merger agreement with Thunder Bridge Acquisition Ltd., a special-purpose acquisition firm …

Apple Inc. on Tuesday announced Target Corp., Taco Bell, and two regional chains are the latest merchants to agree to accept Apple Pay in-store, a development that could bolster the mobile-payments service and further smooth the road for contactless payments in the United States. Separately, Target announced it will also …

Through the years, the network game hasn’t changed. Payment systems need volume, and that means interoperability with other networks. The key is to be smart about it. The payments world is a patchwork of overlapping and interdependent networks. For success, networks need a path or paths to critical mass. For …

Not so long ago, mobile-payments enthusiasts were asking what ailed Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay. Now the Pays finally seem to be getting some traction, though their transaction market share is still minuscule. Is there hope for the Pays? After a summer of generally positive developments, the mobile-payment …

American Express Co. formed its Digital Labs unit less than a year ago, and it has plenty to do as it evaluates new payment forms and new ways to attract cardholders and merchants. Digital Labs is concerned with digital payments, digital ways of engaging with cardholders, and research and development, …