With banks struggling to find their way in the new Durbin era that puts controls on their debit and prepaid card operations, the door is opening wider for American Express Co. and Discover Financial Services to win new prepaid card business, according to two attorneys familiar with payment card interchange …

Countless news reports have reported or speculated about what Google Inc., Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., and Facebook Inc. have done or might do in mobile payments. Consumers, however, don’t rate these four companies as highly as they do their own banks or traditional payment companies in trustworthiness involving their financial …

n The earliest players in the increasingly crowded market for mobile-acceptance applications were software and hardware providers like Intuit Inc., Square Inc., and VeriFone Systems Inc. Lately, though, merchant processors like North American Bancard and Heartland Payment Systems have been getting into the game. n Heartland, which released an Android …

n Square Inc. kept up the pressure on the traditional merchant-acquiring industry on Monday by introducing a souped-up version of its iPad app for brick-and-mortar merchants called Square Register with enhanced business-management functions. Meanwhile, the Isis mobile-payments venture announced it has struck deals with the major U.S. point-of-sale terminal makers …

n n Competition from Square? No problem, according to VeriFone Systems Inc. chief executive Douglas G. Bergeron. n “We’ve had competitors for 30 years,” Bergeron said in response to an analyst’s inquiry about how he sees the competitive risk to VeriFone, the leading U.S.-based point-of-sale terminal maker, from Square Inc., …

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Value-added resellers have turned into very effective—but increasingly expensive—sales engines for merchant processors. When does it make sense to work with them—and just how much of a cut do they take? By Peter Lucas Ten years ago, value-added resellers looking to broaden their reach to merchants were aggressively pursuing relationships …

Backers of mobile-payments programs are more than ever relying on merchants to foot the cost of rewards and offers. But for merchants to buy in, the rules of the game have to change. By Jane Adler As the mobile-payments business gets off the ground and card issuers look for new …

Historically, the payments industry has ignored the fact that not everyone who shops online has a credit or debit card. With a handful of startups providing cash processing for online transactions, that’s no longer the case. By Karen Epper Hoffman No matter how much credit and debit cards have come …

It’s no wonder consumers are confused about debit cards these days, what with big banks discouraging use and merchants doing just the opposite. Influencing payments choices now calls for extra finesse, says Beth Robertson.   Javelin data shows that 70% of consumers believe that recent debit card regulations will actually …