What with the Durbin Amendment taking effect and serious moves in mobile payments, many observers had the feeling that the pace of change in e-payments quickened in 2011. But along with faster change come more problems. Herewith some of the most salient.   By Jim Daly and John Stewart …

  By Karen Epper Hoffman   Next year may be the year of NFC. Then again, it may not be. In the meantime, a slew of startups have some alternatives to think about. Ever hear of Starbucks?       Near-field communication technology (NFC) may have taken a few strides …

  For banks, the e-payments business has become an oasis of stability and growth at a time of financial turmoil. But the threat of non-bank entrants, together with inflexible legacy payments systems, could undermine the business just when banks need it most, warns Louis Blatt.   The pressure of maintaining …

  Two industry trade groups are asking for a delay in implementation of portions of the new federal law requiring acquirers to report merchants’ electronic payment transactions to the Internal Revenue Service, saying constant changes in the reporting form and other problems are making it difficult to meet the reporting …

Responding to complaints about problems in implementing a new federal law requiring acquirers to report merchants’ electronic payment transactions, the Internal Revenue Service announced on Wednesday it will delay penalty provisions and withholding requirements for a year, until Jan. 1, 2013. Acquirers still are required to file the new 1099-K …

  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 …

Shadows darken the recent economic news, but early third-quarter reports from payments-industry companies paint a much sunnier picture. The big card-issuer and merchant processor Total System Services Inc., for instance, on Tuesday said it was increasing its dividend by 43%, its first dividend increase in five years. Last week, Visa …

  n To use PayPal Access, a site must sign up for a PayPal account but is not obliged to accept PayPal. The new system then gives the site access to some 100 million active PayPal users, who can control how much information they want to share. If a user …

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