Canada's Interac Association debit network is teaming with France-based semiconductor manufacturer Inside Contactless in a partnership that will include a test next year that will pair PIN-based debit cards with contactless payments. But to keep transactions moving quickly, cardholders will not need to enter a PIN. The test will be …

While experts debate when mobile commerce will hit its stride, Apple Inc. announced on Tuesday that its App Store, which it set up just one year ago, has downloaded more than 1.5 billion applications for the company's hugely popular iPhone handset. The App Store had just hit the 1 billion …

Is MasterCard Inc. putting the kibosh on a new technology called remote key injection that makes it easier to enhance the security of point-of-sale payment terminals? That's the impression some payments executives got after reading an online Computerworld article Wednesday that said MasterCard was insisting on manual injection of security …

PayPal Inc. is planning to launch a flexible-payments application programming interface that will allow merchants and others to build their own payment systems, but the company denies that the Adaptive Payments API is a response to Amazon.com Inc.'s Flexible Payments Service, which has been available as a commercial product for …

7-Eleven Inc. has gathered between 1 million and 1.2 million signatures on in-store petitions asking Congress to regulate interchange rates, and expects to have 3 million customer signatures by the time the petition drive ends Aug. 10, according to an executive with the Dallas-based convenience-store chain. The response, says Keith …

A sweeping new report from a Canadian Senate committee recommends the federal government create a payment-system oversight board, ban percentage-based debit card interchange for three years, and permit merchants to surcharge for card transactions. Those are just some of the proposals in the report as Canada confronts many of the …

NYCE Payments Network LLC expects to start testing Internet-based debit transactions by the end of the year and to start a commercial service some time next year, says Steven A. Rathgaber, president and chief operating officer of the Secaucus, N.J.-based electronic funds transfer network. The service will rely on single-use …

MasterCard Inc. plans to pay off its remaining $400 million settlement obligation to retailers over debit card acceptance early for a discounted $335 million, according to a filing the card network made on Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Attorneys for the retailer plaintiffs have signed on to the …

Demand is booming for better payment card security as a result of the many data breaches of recent years, and the solution being touted more than any other is “end-to-end encryption.” But a new report from Mercator Advisory Group Inc. asserts that the term is imprecise and implementing the technology …

Bank of America Corp. and processor First Data Corp. launched a merchant-acquiring joint venture Monday, a move that marks the third major change in BofA's acquiring business in five years. First Data will own 48.5% of the new Atlanta-based Banc of America Merchant Services LLC. BofA will own 46.5%, and …