Pundits have predicted the demise of the password for years, yet the simple user-name-and-password combination lives on, frustrating security pros and helping to fuel a spiraling epidemic of data breaches. The reason for the password’s longevity lies in its familiarity compared to newer, more effective authentication methods, says a report …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews The future of checkout, the role of the big payments networks, and merchants’ card-acceptance costs preoccupied a panel of mobile-payments executives assembled Tuesday to assess the current state and near-term future of the still-developing payment technology. With respect to how in-store users should check out on …

• Wells Fargo & Co. will introduce cardless withdrawals to all 13,000 of its ATMs after testing the smart-phone-based service in various locales, a bank executive told Reuters. Wells reportedly is the first bank to roll out cardless ATM withdrawals across its entire ATM fleet. • ATM network operator Cardtronics plc …

• Payments Canada, which owns and operates that nation’s payment clearing and settlement infrastructure, has hired consulting firm Accenture to advise it on a multiyear program called Modernization, which is aimed at creating a faster-payments regime. • Payments-solutions provider ACI Worldwide said its network of more than 130 payment-service providers serving more …

The name might evoke yawns, but the messaging standard known as ISO 20022 will be playing an increasingly important role in electronic payments in the future. The standard goes beyond bare-bones data related to a payment to facilitate the exchange of more information. The Federal Reserve Banks are encouraging more …

• Payments-automation specialist linked2pay has added a real-time merchant-onboarding capability to its Bank Centric Payments platform, allowing independent sales organizations and other resellers enrolled with a sponsor bank to register, underwrite, and board merchants for card processing electronically and immediately. • Mobile-commerce provider Sionic Mobile said it is integrating its ION Commerce …

Amazon.com Inc. announced an integration this week with an e-commerce platform called BigCommerce for its Amazon Pay service, but the company also clearly entertains big ambitions for the payment product it organized as a business in 2015. For now, Amazon Pay is on an upward trend. Some 33 million consumers, …

• Money transfer firm MoneyGram International Inc. said last week’s unsolicited $1 billion bid from Euronet Worldwide Inc., outdoing Ant Financial Services Group’s $880 million offer in January, meets the “company superior proposal” definition in the merger agreement with Ant. The determination means MoneyGram can further consider the Euronet offer. • Private-label and cobranded credit …

• Merchant acquirer Elavon Inc. has appointed Jamie Walker chief executive officer. A 16-year veteran of U.S. Bancorp, which owns the processor, Walker was most recently chief administrative officer of the bank’s Payment Services division, and before that served as Elavon’s chief financial officer. • A blog post from data-security …

Rattle off a selection of payment trends—EMV, tokenization, fraud—and many e-retailers may be beset by apprehension. That’s especially true if the retailer looks to support emerging payment types, according to Matt Herren, director of payments analytics at Computer Services Inc., a Paducah, Ky.-based financial-technology provider. Herren, speaking at the Merchant …