For banks, the e-payments business has become an oasis of stability and growth at a time of financial turmoil. But the threat of non-bank entrants, together with inflexible legacy payments systems, could undermine the business just when banks need it most, warns Louis Blatt.   The pressure of maintaining …

  The mobile-wallet race, which has attracted a slew of entrants in recent months, is about to get more crowded on fears that established merchant acquirers could be elbowed out of the nascent mobile-payments business. Apriva Inc., a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based provider of wireless technology for payments, will launch in November …

  With the holiday season weeks away, more major retailers are now offering so-called virtual gift cards. But few make the experience of buying, sending, and redeeming the digital payment products easy or pleasant, according to a report issued this week. Some 59 of the 100 largest online merchants, ranked …

  Visa Gives a Push to Prepaid Cards   If Visa Inc. could be personified as an illustrious 19th Century editor, he might be saying, “Go prepaid, young man.”   The No. 1 payment card network’s interchange schedule effective Oct. 1, the day new federal debit card interchange price controls …

  By Jane Adler   Rightly or wrongly, lots of investors are mesmerized by the high-profile startup Square. But it’s not the only newbie transforming the payments industry as venture-capital firms scramble to find the next big idea.       Some startup companies get all the attention.   The …

  Two very different financial institutions are adding or expanding their mobile remote deposit capture services to meet what they say is growing customer acceptance of the new banking channel that removes paper from the payments system and hitches banks and credit unions onto the rising smart-phone star. On the …

  n While the development appears to give Isis a leg up on Google Inc., whose NFC initiative has so far been limited to a specific handset model from Samsung, observers point out that the mobile-operator joint venture is lagging behind in other respects. For example, Google recently announced the …

  n The San Francisco-based company, which is aiming its product at developers, in June released an iOS version for Apple Inc. devices. It says the software is now active on 80 applications, with another 750 having registered but not yet gone live. “Getting such a wide variety of apps …

  A startup called Openbucks this week introduced a service that lets consumers use merchants’ gift cards to buy goods online from other merchants. The Redwood City, Calif.-based company, which has been working for five months with gift cards issued by the Subway sandwich-shop chain, claims its “gift card payment …

  Two executives who helped found CoCard Marketing Group LLC have left the Nashville, Tenn.-based independent sales organization to start their own ISO with what appears to be a unique ownership structure based on shareholding for participating offices. “Our company is going to be based on shares of stock,” says …