With the Oct. 1 liability-shift milestone passed, payments companies are reviewing progress so far and introducing new products to take advantage of the migration to EMV chip card payments. First up is MasterCard Inc., which says that “tens of millions” of chip-enabled transactions are being made in the United States. …

By Jim Daly They’re few and far between, but another U.S. issuer, regional banking company First Niagara Financial Group Inc., has committed itself to issuing EMV credit cards of the chip-and-PIN variety. Buffalo, N.Y.-based First Niagara announced just before the U.S. EMV liability shift took effect that it will convert …

In the four years since Visa Inc. announced the EMV liability shift would be Oct. 1, 2015, merchants, issuers, processors, and other parties have expended huge efforts to prepare for this day. But the real work—converting millions more merchants, issuing millions more chip cards, and educating merchants and consumers—is in …

Always conscious of keeping prices low, warehouse membership-club stores are tough customers for merchant acquirers and payments networks because they want to shave card-acceptance costs to the bone. So American Express Co., typically the most expensive card brand for merchants to accept, seemingly scored a coup when it announced that …

While it’s a major power in e-commerce processing, PayPal Holdings Inc. has struggled translating that success to the physical point of sale, where the bulk of transactions still happen (“PayPal Unchained,” September). Last month, its luck may have changed. The big department-store chain Macy’s Inc. said it would accept PayPal …

An unlikely panelist showed up last month at the Fall 2015 Mobile Payments Conference in Chicago: country-music singer and songwriter Rick Monroe, who urged his listeners to get down and get to work on apps that can help musicians sell songs and merchandise. “Mobile has become a way for artists …

When Nikki Baird and Steve Rowen evaluated retailers’ digital gift cards this year, the thing that surprised them the most was how disjointed the shopper experience is. Card sales that worked just fine at a merchant’s desktop site just didn’t translate well to a mobile device, for example. That could …

A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco shows cash still represents 40% of retail payments volume. The study found cash is the lowest-total-cost payment medium for a merchant to accept, simply because the fixed cost is pretty much a requirement for a retail store and the variable …

The EMV era in the U.S. officially started Oct. 1, and for the most part this is shaping up to be an underwhelming launch for chip cards. It’s morning in America for payment cards, the accession of the EMV chip card as the successor to the half-century-old magnetic-stripe card. The …

You may or may not buy into Bitcoin, but you’re going to love the blockchain. Or so say those who are adopting Bitcoin’s ledger technology for everything from stock exchanges to ticket sales. When the speculative bubble that had driven the price of a single Bitcoin to four-figure heights burst …