The mobile-wallet race, which has attracted a slew of entrants in recent months, is about to get more crowded on fears that established merchant acquirers could be elbowed out of the nascent mobile-payments business. Apriva Inc., a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based provider of wireless technology for payments, will launch in November …

Confirming other findings that payment card usage is picking up in the U.S., Visa Inc.’s credit and debit card dollar volume rose 9% in the network’s fourth fiscal 2011 quarter ended Sept. 30 to $516 billion from $474 billion a year earlier. Payment transactions increased 7.3% to 10.5 billion. Visa’s …

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  By Peter Lucas   Spam e-mail may be a constant irritant to consumers, but it’s big business for merchant acquirers willing to settle transactions resulting from those unsolicited ads. Can anything be done to stop it?       Every day some unsuspecting consumer receives an unsolicited e-mail from …

  The automated clearing house network took a crucial step toward faster transaction movement last Friday when NACHA, the network’s governing body, distributed a request for comment on a proposal for same-day settlement. NACHA sent the 22-page document, which sets out a proposed system called Expedited Processing and Settlement (EPS), …

  It’s back to the future, and in many cases higher merchant-acceptance costs for transactions at or under $15, with the bank card networks’ new debit card interchange schedules that will take effect Saturday. That’s the same date that regulated interchange pricing under the Durbin Amendment to the 2010 Dodd-Frank …

  Newspapers, television, and the Web are full of bleak assessments about the U.S. economy, but you wouldn’t know that from the latest financial and operating results reported by Discover Financial Services, the credit card issuer and student-loan provider that’s also the fourth-largest general-purpose credit card network. Discover card sales …

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  What Keeps ATM Execs up at Night?       Complying with new Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements and fighting fraudsters who put skimmers on their machines rank high on the to-do lists of ATM managers.   The findings come in a new report from Aite Group LLC …

  John Stewart and Jim Daly   The Fed’s Durbin-inspired debit regulation is already radically reshaping the business for merchants, issuers, acquirers, and networks. Here’s how.       Well, it’s all over but the shouting. And, with the ink dry now for more than two months, there isn’t even …