Debit card fraud rates fell last year, according to a widely watched annual study of the U.S. debit market. The study also provides new insights about debit cards and mobile wallets, and debit’s increasing popularity for small purchases. The fraud-loss rate for non-PIN (mostly signature-debit) transactions fell 30% from 2.6 …

Google plans soon to give merchants access to the vast trove of credit card credentials it has in its databases to speed customer checkout for mobile and online payments. The search-engine giant, however, is not putting itself in competition with payment card networks, a Google executive said this week. The …

Blackhawk Network Inc., a major player in merchant-branded prepaid cards, just gained an even bigger foothold in that market with its $175-million, all-cash acquisition of CashStar Inc., a 10-year-old firm specializing in digital gift cards. Announced Wednesday morning the dealbrings to Pleasanton, Calif.-based Blackhawk a platform enabling mrchants to market …

Consumers have a new option when choosing a fitness device that’s capable of making a contactless payment. Fitbit Inc., a San Francisco-based maker of fitness trackers, announced its Ionic smart watch Monday that includes Fitbit Pay, the company’s first foray into contactless payments. Fitbit Pay, which will be available when …

Mobile point-of-sale services provider CardFlight Inc. announced that payments provider Central Payment will offer CardFlight’s SwipeSimple mPOS reader to merchants. Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) said home-improvement retailer Lowe’s will use FIS’s BizNOW prepaid service—labeled as Lowe’s PreLoad—to enable contractors to automate their purchasing activities, eliminating the need for their employees to …

First Data Corp. executives Monday highlighted rapid growth in the processor’s Clover Network line of tablet-based point-of-sale devices, and also said attrition has come down significantly among small merchants. Not so hot are First Data’s joint merchant-acquiring ventures with big banks, but the company insists their revenue softness is only …

Evidence is emerging that efforts to convince more consumers to use contactless payments instead of cash for low-value transactions may be having an impact, at least in countries other than the United States for now. That’s the take from Cardtronics plc, the giant ATM operator that owned nearly 45,000 U.S. …

Citing possible regulatory hurdles, payment processor First Data Corp. and commercial payments provider Fleetcor Technologies Inc. disclosed Thursday that they have canceled the planned joint venture they announced in March to consolidate their gift card businesses. “While both companies believe the proposed joint venture would provide significant benefits to customers …

Artificial-intelligence technology, on which a number of payments applications have begun to rely over the past year or so, just keeps getting hotter. Nearly 700 funding deals for AI startups were concluded in 2016, up 33% from 2015, according to a report released this week by CBInsights, a New York …

Month by month, U.S. merchants are steadily switching on EMV capability to accept chip cards, but often overlooked is how more small merchants are simply adding credit and debit card payments, whether chip-based or not. As a result, card payment volume at small merchants has risen almost 7% over the …