New York State’s controversial BitLicense—the nation’s first regulations for virtual currency—are now final, and they’ve got some people on the cutting edge of payments worried about government interference. But Benjamin Lawsky, the official who oversaw the BitLicense’s development, said Wednesday that he hopes intelligent regulation can help modernize what he …

By John Stewart Wednesday’s announcement by MasterCard Inc. that its MasterPass digital-payments service has signed up home-furnishings and décor e-retailer Wayfair, along with several Wayfair properties and mobile apps, threw into relief the progress the two giant general-purpose card networks are making in e-commerce and in-app payments. Once the province …

With its Visa Digital Enablement Program, announced last week on the same day Google Inc. unveiled Android Pay, Visa Inc. has introduced application programming interfaces for card-issuing institutions to link to potentially thousands of digital-payments services with a single integration and without separate business agreements for each. Visa also hopes …

The U.S. Postal Service could generate as much as $1.1 billion in additional annual revenue after five years if it expanded its existing payment services. That’s according to a report from the USPS Office of Inspector General. But a hotly competitive market could dampen those prospects, experts say. Struggling with …

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 …

MasterCard Inc. on Tuesday launched a person-to-person payment service in the United States that will allow debit card holders to send money to any other individual with a debit card account, regardless of the card brand and with the money arriving nearly instantaneously. The new service, dubbed MasterCard Send, also …

By John Stewart Left for dead as recently as two years ago, the concept of mobile payments in physical stores is staging a remarkable resurrection. The signs are everywhere. In April, PayPal Inc. said it will adopt near-field communication (NFC) after years of mocking the technology, which enables wave-and-pay transactions …

Consumers expect restaurants to be the top merchant type to adopt mobile payments, especially as they envision it simplifying the payment process. That’s the finding of a survey from independent sales organization Harbortouch Payments LLC, which also products point-of-sale products for restaurants and other merchants. In the survey of 1,000 …

By Jim Daly Global Payments Inc., the biggest processor swept up in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s April lawsuit against allegedly fraudulent debt collectors, came out with guns blazing Thursday in its first response to the CFPB’s complaint. “The CFPB’s attempt to hold Global [Payments] responsible for the actions of …

Mobile payments emerged on the scene a few years ago, but now it’s clear every market they touch—from the point of sale to peer-to-peer transfers to online lending—has become hot for investment. For proof, look no further than the latest list of so-called unicorns, privately held startups valued at $1 …