Visa Inc. this week announced it would permit the widespread issuance of unembossed consumer credit and debit cards and business debit cards. In doing so, Visa played up the advantages to issuers, including less-complex supply-chain management, quicker activation, the ability to issue cards to customers in person at bank and …

Congress is preoccupied with bailing out Wall Street and mortgage-loan holders, but a bill quietly passed the House Financial Services Committee last week that payment-industry interests hope will become law before the 110th Congress adjourns. That's H.R. 6870, “The Payments System Protection Act of 2008,” a measure that would clarify …

With National City Corp. and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc moving portfolios into its camp, Visa Inc. scored two big debit card wins over MasterCard Inc. this week in the bank card networks' ceaseless struggle to curry issuer and merchant favor. Analysts say the payment industry can expect to …

Sensing a strong shift among consumers away from credit and toward cashlike payment, ModaSolutions Inc.' s eBillme online-payment system plans to pump a large share of its resources into recruiting new merchants and funding promotions with those merchants to attract more buyers, the company's top executive says. Much of the …

A successfully completed test of specialized mobile technology developed jointly by a U.S.-based maker of contactless-payment readers and software and a German smart card manufacturer could bring closer the commercialization of mobile phones that make point-of-sale payments in the same way contactless cards do. The test, whose results were announced …

After years of torrid growth, the automated clearing house's electronic-check code for lockbox payments has seen its expansion slow almost to a halt. The second-quarter numbers in the accounts-receivable conversion (ARC) standard entry class (SEC) could be just a blip, or they may reflect a permanent shift toward non-paper bill …

The heat over payment card interchange and debit cards in Canada is getting high enough to melt glaciers in the Yukon. A retailer group dominated by big stores, the Retail Council of Canada (RCC), on Wednesday launched a Web site called StopStickingItToUs.com in a campaign to build merchant resistance to …

A small software company that has sued big banks and processors for years over patents it holds that relate to check-imaging and image exchange scored a series of victories in recent weeks as three banks settled with the company and agreed to license its technology. A settlement between Bank of …

In the 18 months since NACHA introduced an electronic payment method that lets merchants convert bundles of checks in a central location, it's become clear that the method?known as back-office conversion (BOC)?isn't likely to have a big impact on retailers' paper-check volumes. That's according to Bob Meara, a senior analyst …

A big change may be in the offing for Canada's point-of-sale debit market that could bring American-style percentage-based interchange to a system whose pricing currently is based on flat fees. The change could possibly even bring Visa and MasterCard debit cards to the country for the first time. The result, …