(This is the first part of a two-part column. Part Two will appear next month.) From the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to the laboratories of Silicon Valley, innovation is the most important thing happening in payments today. We are re-inventing not only the technology of payments but …

The Federal Reserve announced Thursday that work began this month on a new study to measure fraud and associated costs to the U.S. payments system as well as identify fraud’s causes and contributing factors. After a competitive bidding process, the central bank hired Boston-based The Boston Consulting Group to do …

The Federal Reserve announced Thursday it is shutting down its Secure Payments Task Force this month. The Fed invited its more than 200 members, made up of payments executives from across the financial-services industry, to work with its FedPayments Improvement Community. Members may also participate in “new collaborative industry work …

A typical household makes from four to a dozen recurring payments month­ly. In addition, households pay for groceries and clothing and other things at points of sale and online. In the future, we may all commute using app-based ride services. But these overwhelmingly draw the passenger’s payment from a credit …

Last year, the Federal Reserve set a goal of having ubiquitous faster payments available in the United States by 2020, and now the first estimates are emerging of just how much dollar volume will flow across systems already in place and in progress. The total will come to $650 billion …

As the new year eases well into its second month, here are five important technology developments that will shake up key payments markets in 2018. B2B payments will finally go digital Perhaps further behind in the fintech curve than they should be are business-to-business payments. This is often attributed to …

When payment volumes and values are displayed as a single graphic, some interesting patterns emerge about how we use current payment methods. Are there implications for new and future payment methods? – Debit card has the highest number of transactions but the lowest total value of those transactions. It has …

Amazon long ago mastered e-commerce, and now its payments unit is making moves in physical stores and in voice commerce. Will it succeed here as it has online? In the fall of 2009, a certain big company in Seattle launched a service that let consumers authenticate themselves for online purchases …

Wearables, a hot sector within the booming Internet of Things, are being outfitted with new payments technology. Will wearables generate a tide or just a trickle of new electronic payment transactions? The idea of enabling smart watches, fitness trackers, and other Internet-connected wearable devices to make contactless electronic payments is …

Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch subsidiary on Monday announced enhanced capabilities for its Virtual Payables service, including the ability by corporate card-using businesses to create single-use account numbers in real time. In addition to the single-use card numbers, businesses with a BofA Merrill purchasing card can connect directly to …