There may be a number of competing definitions and products already in the market and under development, but the current state of payments tokenization may not be as out of whack as some may think. That’s the assessment of the latest report from the Mobile Payments Industry Workgroup, whose members …

With little fanfare, some of the nation’s major PIN-debit networks over the past couple of years have instituted so-called participation fees that are assessed for each merchant location in the network. The fees’ progenitor, says a veteran market observer, is Visa Inc.’s Fixed Acquirer Network Fee (FANF), which Visa instituted …

Left for dead as recently as two years ago, the concept of mobile payments in physical stores is staging a remarkable resurrection. The signs are everywhere. In April, PayPal Inc. said it will adopt near-field communication (NFC) after years of mocking the technology, which enables wave-and-pay transactions with smart phones, …

Merchant attrition fell to 21% in 2014, down from 22% in 2013, reflecting continuing merchant use of specialty point-of-sale software that helps them run their businesses in addition to enabling payment acceptance, finds a report from Adil Consulting. The report, “Merchant Attrition: Strategies, Tactics, Best Practices & Industry Benchmarking,” examines …

Criminals targeting payment card data have a very hefty incentive, suggests the Trustwave 2015 Global Security Report. How much of an incentive? The return on investment in one example is 1,425%. Released Tuesday, the report quantifies the return on investment for a common type of online fraud, suggesting strategies to …

Consumers this fall will begin to dip a lot of EMV credit cards into EMV-compatible point-of-sale terminals, but not so many EMV debit cards. That’s the assessment from Mercator Advisory Group Inc. in its “Prediction for the U.S. Migration to EMV Debit Cards” report released last week. By Oct. 1, …

Judging from new Federal Reserve data, April was a month of joy for merchants and credit card issuers as consumers spent more on their credit cards, but for consumer advocates and financial advisors it may have been a month of angst as they saw foolish consumers take on too much …

Merchant processor Square Inc. is about to introduce a card reader that supports Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay mobile-payment service, Apple announced Monday. Apple Pay also will support retailers’ loyalty programs, according to Jennifer Bailey, Apple Inc.’s vice president of Internet services. The announcements came at the start of Apple’s Worldwide …

By John Stewart As participants in the 40-year-old automated clearing house network get ready to implement same-day clearing capability, network growth continues to percolate, according to the latest numbers from NACHA, the Herndon, Va.-based rules-setting organization for the ACH. Transactions totaled 4.72 billion in the first quarter, an increase of …

By John Stewart Dwolla Inc. announced Thursday morning it is eliminating its 25-cent transaction fee, effective immediately, on all transactions types. The fee, which has applied to transaction values exceeding $10, is typically paid by the receiver of the money. Des Moines, Iowa-based Dwolla processes person-to-person payments as well as …