An obscure transaction code used by the automated clearing house network for debit card payments is surging as major merchants adopt the payment method and offer significant rewards to customers who use it. The POS code, which refers to ACH debit entries initiated at an electronic terminal, accounted for 4.59 …

Quick—which of these five common financial products was the only one to grow last year: credit cards, debit cards, prepaid cards, checking accounts, or personal savings accounts? If you answered “prepaid cards,” give yourself a gold star. New research from Javelin Strategy & Research says fewer consumers in 2011 reported …

Annual Field Guide to Alternative Payments You’ll need a fair amount of memory on your hard drive to keep track of all the comings and goings in the bubbling world of alternative payments. By now, our Field Guide to Alternative Payments needs no introduction. It’s one of our most popular …

Eric Grover Low acceptance costs, convenience, and security aren’t enough. As this global review of would-be PayPals and Visas shows, startups need a clear path to a mass of users. With the advent of mobile payments, we read almost daily about new payments startups. And this avalanche of startups follows …

Ashok Joshi, P.E. Public transportation is a natural for contactless chip card payments, but issues remain, such as whether and when to use a PIN. The experience in London may hold some answers for U.S. deployments. The payment industry is always trying to simplify the user experience while paying close …

PayPal’s bold new strategy for the physical point of sale faces daunting challenges that will require the young company to accept lower margins, work with ISOs, revamp systems, and chop transaction costs, says René M. Pelegero. Unfortunately, ISOs perceive PayPal as the enemy. Thus, PayPal needs to develop, and quickly …

For years, the growth of electronic payments has been fueled by the conversion of check writers into card users at the point of sale, but now those days may be coming to an end. Research, as well as the experience of one major retail chain, indicates the check writers who …

The Federal Reserve Board on Tuesday released data about banks’ debit card interchange income now that the Durbin Amendment is in effect. Not surprisingly, the numbers show that interchange for regulated card issuers plunged. The nation’s leading retailer trade group took the occasion to decry the Fed, even though merchants …

JPMorgan Chase & Co. on Tuesday introduced what appears to be the first commercially available mobile remote deposit capture service for corporate entities. Widely known in electronic-payments circles for its TV ads for its consumer-based mobile check-capture product, Chase is now seeking new clients for its Image Deposit Direct Mobile …

In the wake of the Durbin Amendment’s debit card price controls taking effect last fall and other new regulations, the payments industry is feeling politically battered and bruised and fearing that more fights with merchants are on the way. “Our era of self-regulation of pricing has ended,” Mary Weaver Bennett, …