The Gimlet Eye While we were putting together this month’s cover package observing the sixth anniversary of Bitcoin, it struck me that this bête noir of banking shares something in common with that other upstart in digital payments, Apple Pay. Yes, they are different in nearly every respect. For consumers, …

The advent of younger users, combined with the rise of smart phones and a much-improved user experience, is helping to drive a surge in mobile person-to-person payments. But providers still haven’t figured out how to make money on the service, which lets consumers use smart phones to pay each other …

Payments 3.0 This issue inaugurates the Payments 3.0 Fearless Forecast. The expectations discussed here represent a distillation of insights gathered from banks, merchants, card schemes, startups, regulators, and consumers, distilled by 30 years of seeing new payments systems come and go. Apple Pay: 2015 will be the year for Apple …

Acquiring    From ISOs to ISVs, the players that put solutions packages together for merchants are learning that working together comes with costs and benefits. The trick is figuring out which outweighs the other. Nothing like a $1.65 billion acquisition to drive home how important independent software vendors and value-add …

Cover Story By John Stewart Putting the Silk Road and Mt. Gox disasters behind it, the Bitcoin train is picking up speed. But what’s the real destination? If you want to get an idea of how far Bitcoin has come, take a look at what people are buying with it. At …

Components Biometrics in electronic payments didn’t have much life until last year, when Apple’s Touch ID and other applications gave the technology a shot of adrenaline. What’s next? It’s Act II for biometrics in payments. The now-defunct Solidus Networks Inc., better known as Pay By Touch, dominated Act I for …

Two days before Christmas, Google Inc. quietly filed a federal lawsuit against Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc., alleging the card networks violated antitrust law by setting “supracompetitive” interchange rates from 2004 to 2012. The unusually sparse, three-page suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, asks …

Retailer organizations are lambasting an Independent Community Bankers of America survey that blamed retailers for breach costs that totaled $90 million at The Home Depot Inc. this year. In a letter to the ICBA and bearing Monday’s date, the chief executives of the Retail Industry Leaders Association, National Retail Federation, …

Breach-notification laws, misbehaving merchants, and online sales tax legislation are just three potential hotspots for legislation and regulation in 2015, advise payments industry attorneys. Long a wish-list item for many, a uniform, national breach-notification law could see enactment in 2015, thanks —unfortunately—to the flurry of large-and small-scale payment card data …

Just going by the headlines, you’d think mobile is the prime mover in the payments business. But desktop PCs still dominate online sales, and for the holiday-shopping season they’ve been ringing like cash registers. Since the official start of the season on Nov. 1, consumers using PCs have registered $48.3 …