As more and more financial institutions, processors, and networks climb on the instant-payments bandwagon, Computer Services Inc. has introduced a person-to-person payment service with a twist: It delivers near-real-time payments to recipients’ Visa debit cards. CSI, which calls its new service SPIN, for Social Payments Instant Network, has one client …

The move will allow Chirpify members to pay merchants and each other on the Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram social networks with American Express, Discover, MasterCard, and Visa cards or with ACH transfers. It also propels the fledgling Portland, Ore.-based company further into the fast-growing world of social commerce, where companies …

There’s clearly consumer demand to speed up settlement, and it’s been done overseas. The challenges here, though, are formidable, starting with defining just what ‘real time’ is. By Jim Daly Doctors often tell their harried patients to slow down, but in payments it’s just the opposite. In an effort to …

  Google Inc. released a trio of announcements on Wednesday concerning its Google Wallet mobile-payments application, but even taken together these did not add up to the major overhaul of the product that Google promised last fall. Google’s news included: a Wallet-based person-to-person payments service that works with Gmail, Google’s …

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 …

Mobile dominates this year’s Guide, as you’d expect, but so does the urge toward faster payments. Neither trend is going away any time soon. The obvious theme running through alternative payments nowadays is the predominance of mobile. Processors, solutions vendors, and startups alike are scrambling to make it possible to …

Lauri Giesen Declining interchange revenues are squeezing non-bank ATM owners and managers, but new revenue sources and technology could ease the pain. It’s a challenging time for many deployers of ATMs in off-premise locations. With higher costs caused by changing government and network regulations and declining interchange revenue, many independent …

  Great news for mobile payments: the Federal Reserve says the percentage of consumers using a smart phone to make a purchase at the point of sale grew nearly threefold last year. Not-so-great news: don’t rely on that figure, because it’s too small to be statistically significant. Those and other …

E-commerce, better malware, and mobile devices are on the minds of fraudsters, according to Trustwave Holdings Inc.’s latest annual data-breach study. Chicago-based Trustwave, a leading data-forensics investigator and security vendor, based its report on 450 data breaches it investigated last year around the world. Hackers targeted payment card data in …

  Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) on Monday rolled out its entry in the person-to-person payments sweepstakes and, as with other providers in recent months, its service offers real-time settlement. Indeed, People Pay—the name FIS has given its new P2P service—is built on the PayNet network the company introduced …