As the recession continues to batter merchants of all sizes, small and medium-size retailers are getting hit especially hard, and as a result so are the acquirers that process their card transactions. Indeed, in a development apparently never seen before, same-store sales on Visa and MasterCard for these Main Street …

MasterCard Inc.'s announcement on Monday that The Home Depot Inc. would accept the MasterCard PayPass contactless card at 1,974 U.S. locations, along with last week's news that sporting-goods chain The Sports Authority also would take PayPass, indicate that the card network is looking beyond the original base of cash-oriented merchants …

Fifth Third Bank will be offering global money-transfer services at its 1,300 branches in 12 states under an agreement The Western Union Co. announced Monday. The new service is part of the Cincinnati-based bank's ongoing effort to provide services to the unbanked and underbanked, Mark Erhardt, senior vice president of …

Nearly a year after ordering the phase-out of Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), a technology introduced in 1999 to protect data flowing over wireless networks, the PCI Security Standards Council this week released new guidelines for enhanced wireless security. The so-called Payment Card Industry data security standard wireless, written by the …

Acquirers and independent sales organizations have plenty of opportunity to build transaction volume with merchants despite the economic downturn. They just need to work harder at incentives for merchants to accept cards instead of cash or checks and on satisfying merchant needs, according to a new research report released Wednesday …

As the momentum behind mobile payments gathers strength, some technology experts are starting to consider so-called smart phones?which make mobile payments easy?to be devices in need of encryption. That's one finding in an annual study out Monday about encryption, a hot topic in the payment card industry nowadays because of …

Is MasterCard Inc. putting the kibosh on a new technology called remote key injection that makes it easier to enhance the security of point-of-sale payment terminals? That's the impression some payments executives got after reading an online Computerworld article Wednesday that said MasterCard was insisting on manual injection of security …

A sweeping new report from a Canadian Senate committee recommends the federal government create a payment-system oversight board, ban percentage-based debit card interchange for three years, and permit merchants to surcharge for card transactions. Those are just some of the proposals in the report as Canada confronts many of the …

MasterCard Inc. plans to pay off its remaining $400 million settlement obligation to retailers over debit card acceptance early for a discounted $335 million, according to a filing the card network made on Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Attorneys for the retailer plaintiffs have signed on to the …

Despite tests and innumerable press releases, the number of payment transactions from cell phones barely registers. But payments from mobile devices are about to take off thanks to a convergence of factors on the demand and supply side, according to a new report from Yankee Group Research Inc. The “Dialing …