Long outclassed by nimble tech players, financial institutions are finally scoring points in the P2P payments game with the rapidly growing Zelle network. But nobody’s conceding defeat in this much-coveted market. Keeping track of the players in peer-to-peer payments is like following an ensemble cast—a playbill is needed to identify …

Call it Newtonian market dynamics. Sir Isaac Newton propounded the physical law that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Now, in the suddenly vibrant market for person-to-person payments, we’re seeing an analogous reaction unfold. As our cover story on page 22 explains, financial institutions have made …

Young adults like loyalty programs even more than older consumers, and the so-called Millennial generation has its own preferences for types of loyalty programs and the form factors for connecting merchants and consumers, according to new research from Hawk Incentives. For example, as a group, respondents to a Hawk Incentives …

Generation Z is about to become a major force in financial services and payments, and that will change how payments providers market their services to them. That assertion, in the “Technologies Influencing Generation Z Payments Adoption” report released this week by Javelin Strategy & Research, is based, in part, on …

A deep dive into the more than 2,000 pages of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s regulations covering the prepaid market shows that the CFPB is trying to extend uniform consumer protections to as many payment types as possible. That includes unauthorized or disputed transactions for all financial-access devices regardless of …

The PCI Security Standards Council issued what it calls a “minor update” to the current version 3.2 of the Payment Card Industry data-security standard. Version 3.2.1 adds no new requirements and is meant to eliminate any confusion regarding effective dates for existing PCI DSS requirements and Secure Socket Layer (SSL) …

Ever since banks, merchants, and tech companies first introduced mobile services, they’ve looked for ways to entice more usage by streamlining the way consumers interact with little screens. Now Wells Fargo & Co. has decided to put frequently used payments services on the home screen of its mobile app, before …

An airline trade group has teamed up with Germany’s Deutsche Bank to develop a payment system that would bypass the credit card networks, potentially saving users billions in interchange. The proposal comes from the International Air Transport Association, which says it has 280 members representing 83% of air traffic. The …

A new entry in the arena for payments-related acquisitions, Syncapay, is targeting specialists in disbursements and payouts. Plano, Texas-based Syncapay debuted last week with the intent to acquire payments companies that could benefit from shared services, while retaining the autonomy that differentiates them. “We are not looking at doing a …

We list 37 entries this year, of which only three appeared in our original Guide nine years ago. This year’s Field Guide represents our 10th annual effort to catalog the broad currents in electronic payments by listing some of the more salient players providing alternatives to the big network brands. …