The payments industry’s long struggle to bring person-to-person payments to a mass market reached a new milestone in recent days with the addition of real-time settlement. Under an agreement announced late last week, the NYCE Payments Network LLC will offer CashEdge Inc.’s Popmoney person-to-person payments service to its financial-institution clients, …

With much of the country buried in snow and ice on Wednesday, Visa Inc. released transaction and charge-volume numbers that likely warmed the predilections of electronic-payments watchers. The leading card network reported U.S. credit and debit card payments volume of $493 billion for its first quarter of fiscal 2011 ended …

Trends & Tactics Android’s Edge in the Smart-Phone Skirmish The splashy news in smart phones last month was Verizon Wireless’s announcement that it will start marketing the iPhone, breaking AT&T Mobility’s long-held exclusivity on Apple Inc.’s popular device. But there was quieter mobile news that will be of greater consequence …

Opinion & Analysis Washington’s Assault on Payments Eric Grover Congress and regulators are bent on turning payment networks into public utilities subject to political pressure rather than market forces. Can they be stopped? Consumers and merchants have never been better served by the retail electronic payments industry than they are …

The Gimlet Eye You Can’t Ignore Google for Mobile Payments It is instructive how fast the conversation about mobile payments has shifted from cell phones generically understood to what we have come to call smart phones. I suppose it was the advent of the “app” that did it, a profusion …

Endpoint Scoping out Durbin’s Impact Would a telecom network qualify as a payment network if it is providing the primary transaction authorization and settlement infrastructure? The Fed’s proposed Durbin rules portend a thorough-going reshaping of the electronic-payments business. Time to start figuring out who’ll win and who’ll lose, says Patricia …

E-Commerce The Bill-Pay Horse Race Peter Lucas After years of lagging behind, bill-payment Web sites sponsored by financial institutions finally have achieved parity with biller-direct sites. But the outcome of the long-term race is still uncertain, given some compelling features billers’ sites retain. After slugging it out for market share …

Despite the hype about mobile payments, most consumers still aren't comfortable using smart phones to pay for things, according to new research from the Bank Administration Institute and Hitachi Consulting. That, however, could change, and change soon. The study also shows that debit remains consumers' preferred payment choice, though its …

It was an “I-told-you-so moment” Thursday morning for William A. Cooper, the outspoken chairman and chief executive of TCF Financial Corp. Cooper said many bankers dismissed TCF’s assertion that the Federal Reserve Board, in carrying out the dictates of the Dodd-Frank financial-reform law’s Durbin Amendment, would cut debit card interchange …

In the wake of the Federal Reserve Board’s proposed interchange caps for debit cards, as well as Visa Inc.’s decision to introduce dual interchange tables for debit, much discussion has focused on the impact of radically reduced interchange income on issuing banks. But an often overlooked factor concerns just how …