By John Stewart Market signals may be mixed, but on balance the 2015 holiday season will be a merry one for plastic and digital gift cards, according to Mercator Advisory Group. The Maynard, Mass.-based research firm’s annual forecast for November and December estimates loads on closed-loop U.S. gift cards will …

With Target Corp. reportedly planning its own mobile wallet, the nation’s fourth-largest retailer may some time next year join the largest, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., in launching a proprietary wallet app. That could not only add to the fragmentation of the nascent digital-wallet market, it could also indicate weakening attachment to …

By John Stewart Ever since the launch of Apple Pay more than a year ago, mobile wallets have followed a pattern of recruiting financial institutions to enable their network-branded credit and debit cards to work in the wallet apps. But retailers are getting in on this action, as well, with …

Another 800-pound gorilla will soon be promoting a digital wallet, only this time it’s not a technology firm. It’s JPMorgan Chase & Co., a world leader in payment card issuance and merchant acquiring. “We’re launching our own wallet. You’ll be hearing a lot more about it,” Mike Passilla, chief executive …

  Consumer confusion, lack of standards for offers, and splintered merchant acceptance continue to impede mobile-wallet adoption among consumers, but they are not expected to thwart the long-term prospects for the payments model, suggested panelists on Wednesday at the NFC Solutions Summit in Phoenix. Near-field communication (NFC) technology not only can …

By John Stewart With Google Inc.’s Sept. 10 launch of Android Pay, competition in the mobile-payments market heated up to an even higher temperature. But in all the talk about tech companies, handset makers, and banks ushering in services like Android Pay, Apple Pay, and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.’s Samsung …

While doubts persist about how appealing mobile wallets really are for consumers, a majority—54%—would use a mobile wallet if it were accepted at all merchants. That’s one finding from a Blackhawk Engagement Solutions Inc. survey, released Tuesday, on shopper behavior. Blackhawk Engagement Solutions is a unit of Pleasanton, Calif.-based Blackhawk …

PayPal Inc.’s plans to include three payment technologies—magnetic stripe, contactless, and EMV—in its upcoming mobile point-of-sale device could help the payments company capitalize on growing interest in mobile wallets. Many companies are betting on mobile wallets. But part of the ante is ensuring consumers can use their stored credit and …

Carrying out business as usual is becoming harder to do as the payments business tries to adapt to new technologies. Asked at a recent San Francisco conference about what are the most disruptive trends in payments, 40% of industry professionals and alternative-finance executives polled cited the proliferation of mobile-wallet use …

By John Stewart While big-time companies like Apple Inc., Google Inc., and Samsung Electronics Co. prepare to battle it out for control of mobile payments, evidence is emerging that consumers may be strongly inclined to reward merchants that accept mobile wallets and punish those that don’t. Some 30% of consumers …