Once perceived as a payment method for drug dealers and shady merchants craving anonymity, the Bitcoin virtual currency is now accepted at approximately 75,000 merchants worldwide, and their numbers are growing fast, according to a new report by First Annapolis Consulting Inc. Even so, it will be a while before …

Well into the annual Cyber Monday shopping frenzy, online sales are up nearly 9% compared to last year, while mobile devices are driving more traffic and sales, continuing a trend established on Thanksgiving and on Black Friday. That’s according to IBM Corp.’s Digital Analytics service, which is reporting periodically on …

With a critical deadline arriving in less than a year, it has become a common observation about the U.S. conversion to the Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip card standard that transaction fraud prevented by EMV will simply move into e-commerce channels. Now, a new report from Javelin Strategy & Research argues e-commerce …

Want to know where the chargebacks are coming from? Clearwater, Fla.-based Chargebacks911, which runs a chargeback-mitigation service, has ranked the top five U.S. cities in terms of chargeback rates, placing a ZIP code in Show Low, Ariz., with a 2.2% rate, at the top. The study of 500,000 chargebacks of …

Merchants like to gripe about the Payment Card Industry data-security standard, but in an era of data breaches and rapidly changing payment technology, Visa Inc. thinks a strict approach to the rules of card acceptance is needed more than ever. The largest payment card network is expected to roll out …

In the past 12 months, 51% of consumers purchased a physical good using a mobile phone, the highest percentage in five years, potentially signaling a greater propensity for consumer adoption of mobile payments, according to a new report from Javelin Strategy & Research. That’s up from 45% in 2013. In …

Security NotesPicture this: We’re all standing in line at the American Express travel bureau. We hand over our U.S. dollars and take away American Express Traveler’s checks. I do it, you do it, the banks do it, the merchants do it. We all carry American Express travelers’ checks. Unfortunately, the …

Payments 3.0 What Is Apple Pay? Apple Pay sticks to Apple Inc.’s basic device-centric model, putting the functionality in the thing purchased from Apple and eschewing re-selling information about the buyer/user. As with any other iPhone or Mac (or the Lisa for that matter), the company’s profit comes from selling …

AcquiringBy Jim DalyVolumes have been written about how Apple Pay benefits, or doesn’t benefit, consumers, merchants, card issuers, and even payment networks. But what about merchant acquirers? Train a cold eye on the new Apple Pay mobile-payment service for Apple Inc.’s recently introduced iPhone 6 models and the upcoming Apple …

Strategies By John Stewart Thanks to new players, new tech, and new data sources, access to funding has never been so plentiful for small but growing merchants. The payments industry often celebrates small merchants as the breeding ground of transaction growth. After all, as they start up, they offer new …