Nearly half of consumers are interested in using mobile wallets, and they are not necessarily wedded to wallet products from banks, according to research released on Monday. Indeed, some 48% of U.S. consumers surveyed online in April said they are interested in mobile wallets. Of these, 80% expressed a preference …

Jane Adler Durbin’s cap on interchange for big banks was supposed to be the death knell for debit card rewards. Instead, rewards programs are flourishing, albeit with a few twists. “Relationship rewards,” anyone? After caps on debit card interchange rates went into effect last fall, KeyBank took a contrarian approach. …

Hey, mobile-payments types: the fraudsters  are gunning for you. What are you doing to keep fraud at bay? So far, the known mobile-payments security lapses have proven to be more embarrassments than the truly damaging data breaches seen with more conventional payment methods. For example, Square Inc. initially passed out …

To effectively secure payment card data, encryption must occur in tamper-resistant security modules, says Steve Elefant. Software always leaves valuable payment card data in the clear somewhere during the life cycle of the transaction. Steven M. Elefant is managing director at Soaring Ventures, Lafayette, Calif., and of counsel at The …

Groupon Inc. redoubled its efforts to penetrate the point-of-sale market with its acquisition of New York City-based software startup Breadcrumb, whose product lets restaurants run transactions on iPad tablets. The deal, announced on Tuesday, follows news that the Chicago-based daily-deal giant is testing a mobile-acceptance service in and around San …

Visa Inc. has been saying for months that the Durbin Amendment’s transaction-routing and network-exclusivity rules, which took effect April 1, would take a bite out of its debit business. Gash might be a better word for the amendment’s initial effects, especially on the Visa-owned Interlink PIN-debit network. The No. 1 …

The federal government’s new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fixed general-purpose reloadable prepaid cards in its regulatory sights Wednesday with a notice of proposed rulemaking and a public hearing in Durham, N.C., where its senior officials heard both praise for and condemnations of the cards. The CFPB said it would examine …

For months, the carrier-backed Isis mobile-payments initiative could boast just one accepting merchant, the Utah Transit Authority in Salt Lake City, one of two cities it plans to launch its service in this summer. That changed on Tuesday with the announcement that Isis has signed some 50 retail companies both …

Dwolla Corp. announced this week that Veridian Credit Union, Waterloo, Iowa, will be the first financial institution to use a system for real-time funds transfer that Dwolla has been working on for months and testing since earlier this year. A Dwolla spokesman says more financial institutions around the country are …

Nearly a year after major U.S. rivals introduced mobile wallets, MasterCard Inc. officially entered the market on Monday with a service that aims to trump competing products by being open to a wide range of payment brands and by offering tools that can let third parties develop their own digital …