Sometimes news developments turn certain types of merchants into public-relations and political hot potatoes for their payment processors, forcing merchant acquirers to decide whether they want to continue serving them. Despite strong sales, firearms merchants are one such category today, thanks to several mass shootings in the past two years, …

No sooner had Charlie Scharf taken over at Visa Inc. than he was making nice to retailers. The new chief executive, surveying a history of frayed relations between card networks and merchants, spoke at Visa’s Investor Day conference early last month about building new bridges between the two camps. He …

Settlement? What Settlement? Who said the proposed settlement of a massive court case involving interchange unveiled in July 2012 would put to rest the decades-old dispute between merchants and the bank card networks over card-acceptance costs? Beginning just before Memorial Day, partisans filed three interchange-related lawsuits in less than a …

Gideon Samid • Gideon@bitmint.com The specter of consumers pushing electronic money bits to merchants is a cause for concern in the payment empires of today: the networks. Concern, not alarm, because consumers will continue to have eyes bigger than their pockets, and will be eager for credit. What will the …

Elizabeth Whalen So far, usage of so-called open-fare payment systems is low, and now transit agencies will confront new problems implementing them. As the hardware for accepting payments on public-transportation systems in many cities nears obsolescence, transit authorities are planning upgrades that allow riders to pay fares with something they …

Lauri Giesen The ranks of regional EFT networks have dwindled from more than 100 in the 1980s to about 20 today. What are the smaller ones doing to stay alive—and thrive? In the mid-1980s, the United States had about 150 electronic funds transfer networks. Apart from their often colorful names—bygone …

Karen Epper Hoffman PINless debit card transactions are gaining favor as online merchants latch onto this speedy payment alternative. But will PINless debit’s rise give debit networks much of a boost in the short term? Call it PINless debit version 2.0. The ability to make a payment with a debit …

The complexity of federal and state regulation has some operators thinking twice, including Facebook and Microsoft, both of which ditched their currencies. By Linda Punch When federal prosecutors in May shut down digital-currency network Liberty Reserve on money-laundering charges, all eyes turned to other peer-to-peer digital currencies, such as Bitcoin …

Peter Lucas The sluggish progress of near-field communication in payments has TSMs looking to extend their services to cloud-based wallets and beyond. Consider the plight of the trusted service manager. Its fate is closely tied to mobile payments that use a form of short-range, interactive radio-wave exchange called near-field communication …

A common solution has been found that will ease EMV migration and permit compliance with the Durbin Amendment, but all networks must support the solution to realize its full benefits, says Terry Dooley. The key to an easier, more affordable, and less complex solution for EMV in the United States …