Obopay Inc., a pioneer in mobile payments whose profile fell as mobile wallets gained momentum, has put itself up for sale, according to sources familiar with the matter. Details about the sale remain sketchy, including possible valuations and the identity of bidders, but sources say the 7-year-old company and its …

The retailers behind the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) mobile-payments initiative are united in backing the effort and remain committed to supporting only MCX for mobile payments in their stores, retail executives said during a panel discussion this week. While details surrounding how customers will use the yet-to-be-launched MCX and how …

A senior Federal Reserve official said greater speed, efficiency, and responsiveness to consumer preferences are the central bank’s top payments priorities as it plans for the next decade. But apart from promoting open communication and collaboration among industry players, Sandra Pianalto, president and chief executive of the Federal Reserve Bank …

MasterCard is getting close to announcing an EMV-related liability shift for online and other card-not-present transactions, a network executive said on Monday. “MasterCard will have a card-not-present liability shift,” said Melanie Gluck, vice president of emerging payments at the country’s second-largest payments network. “We haven’t announced it yet, it’s under …

It’s time for bankers to stop looking at mobile technology merely as a cost cutter and start using it to make money, said speakers at a retail-banking technology conference on Tuesday. Banks that add a variety of new services to their mobile offerings ranging from in-store bar-code scanning to expedited …

Why aren’t consumers all that excited about mobile payments? Maybe it’s because providers are focusing on payments when what consumers want is a lot broader than that. Call it an Integrated App. By René M. Pelegero Remember the days when we had to look at newspapers to find out which …

In a play for the business of what an American Express Co. executive calls “the unhappily banked,” AmEx and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Monday introduced their Bluebird prepaid card for U.S. customers of the world’s largest retailer. The card not only expands the consumer markets that AmEx, normally associated with …

The nascent market for faster funds transfers, which has been on the boil all year, heated up further this week with Fidelity National Information Services Inc.’s announcement of its real-time PayNet network. The new system, which relies on FIS’s NYCE Payments Network LLC debit switch, is live with 200 FIS …

You’d almost think it was 2010 all over again, given the current fights about the Durbin Amendment, the section of that year’s Dodd-Frank Act that regulates debit card interchange and transaction routing. Oral arguments are set for Oct. 3 in a retailer lawsuit that seeks to have a court order …

The automated clearing house network’s transaction count grew by 4% in the second quarter compared to the same period in 2011, according to the latest figures from NACHA, the regulatory body for the network. Transactions totaled 4.15 billion, worth approximately $9.1 trillion in value, according to the NACHA statistics. Transactions …