Often regarded as the enemy, officials from the federal government gave some friendly advice to merchant acquirers last week about what regulators are concerned with regarding payments, including mobile payments, prepaid cards, and fraud control. The recommendations came during a government panel Thursday at the Electronic Transactions Association’s annual conference …

The number of consumers buying stuff in stores using their mobile devices nearly tripled last year. But the Federal Reserve, which came up with that factoid, cautions mobile-payments enthusiasts not to whoop it up too much because the increase in mobile payors is not statistically significant. The Fed’s finding came …

Gideon Samid • gideon@BitMint.comWhen the news spread in 1914 that Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria had been assassinated in Sarajevo, few, if any, had the foresight to envision the colossal consequences that would spring from this single act. But this spark ignited a horrific chapter in world history: World War …

Elizabeth Whalen While the data are mixed about ACH fraud, what banks and companies can do to keep it under control is quite clear. Recent data give mixed signals about automated clearing house fraud as the number of ACH transactions and the number and types of ACH originators grows. A …

Collaboration between banks, mobile carriers and utilities could pave the way for enhanced services, including money transfers, says Eyad Hasan. Is there an ongoing dispute between banks and mobile service providers? Absolutely not. Eyad Hasan is senior project manager at EastNets Holding Ltd., with U.S. offices in Los Angeles and …

  MasterCard Inc. chief executive Ajay Banga on Wednesday downplayed the company’s controversial digital-wallet fee and said critics had been generating the “wrong noise” about the pending fee. Banga’s comments came during the No. 2 payment card network’s first-quarter conference call with analysts, when Banga also said U.S. consumer spending …

  Leading payment processor First Data Corp. reached outside the company over the weekend to tap Frank Bisignano, a veteran operations executive with experience at some of the nation’s largest banks, as its new chief executive officer. Bisignano, most recently co-chief operating officer at JPMorgan Chase & Co., replaces Jonathan …

  One full year after complete implementation of the controversial Durbin Amendment’s debit card regulations, the impact on both merchants and consumers—the law’s putative beneficiaries—remains mixed, according to a study released by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. While Durbin drastically reduced interchange for the country’s largest banks while …

  The provisions of the Durbin Amendment to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act are starting to hurt smaller issuers’ debit card income even though these financial institutions are explicitly exempted from the law’s cap on interchange rates, according to a debit expert. “This phenomenon is happening as we speak,” said Tony …

  Proponents of same-day settlement of automated clearing house transactions are now pinning their hopes on an enhanced same-day service from the Federal Reserve that contains many elements in a proposal from ACH governing body NACHA that failed last August despite widespread banker support. The beefed-up Fed service, however, still …