Following through on a tax-season initiative it announced last September, the U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday launched a pilot program that could enable more than half a million low- and moderate-income individuals to receive tax refunds via prepaid cards. Next week, the Treasury Department will begin sending letters to 600,000 …

While the news in smart phones this week has been all about Verizon Wireless’s announcement that it will start marketing the iPhone next month, the news that may well be of more importance to mobile payments and mobile banking is the hot streak that Google Inc.’s Android operating system is …

In an apparent effort to calm its smaller debit card issuers, Visa Inc. says it will develop a two-tier interchange schedule, one with regulated rates arising from the Dodd-Frank financial-reform law and the other with unregulated rates applicable to banks and credit unions with fewer than $10 billion in assets. …

At first glance, a review of the data-breach scene in 2010 shows signs of improvement, or at least stabilization, according to figures from the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC). Although the total number of reported breaches increased to 662 from 498 in 2009, the number of records known to have …

Acquiring Next in Merchants’ Cross-Hairs Lauri Giesen Fresh from their success in winning regulation of debit card interchange, merchants smell bank blood in the water. That means banks and the networks had better act fast if they want to protect credit card interchange. Now that retailers have gotten Congress to …

Rewriting the Transaction Routing Rules The Durbin Amendment throws out exclusive debit network agreements and gives merchants more freedom to route debit transactions according to their wishes. Who will win and lose in the post-Durbin world? BY JIM DALY By the time you read this, the Federal Reserve Board will …

Endpoint What’s Holding up the Mobile Point of Sale? As powerful as the technology is, mobile-payment acceptance won’t go very far until solution providers start giving businesses the choices they’re looking for in hardware and processing platforms, says Bill Clark. One likely cause for this slow growth rate is merchants’ …

The Gimlet Eye The Forgotten Ones No doubt everyone is still digesting the debit card interchange proposals that the Federal Reserve Board released on Dec. 16. These rules, which represent the first-ever government regulation of payment card interchange, are the result of a years-long tug-of-war between merchants on one end …

Networks Free of IRDs, Check 21 Challenges the ACHLinda Punch The Check 21 law created the substitute check, or image-replacement document. After six years and a brief boom, IRDs are on their way to the payments dustbin, just as Check 21’s backers intended. What are the implications for ACH payments? …

Security An End to the Great Data-Storage DebatePeter Lucas Weaning merchants from their ingrained practice of storing payment card data won’t be easy, but security experts conclude it must be done. Meanwhile, encryption technology, though growing in popularity, is not invulnerable. Having survived database breaches at high-profile retailers and merchant …