Just as consumers have become accustomed to using their credit and debit cards across multiple shopping channels, so too are many expecting the digitized, and mobilized, versions of these cards to mimic that experience. That finding, from 451 Research LLC’s “Mobile Pay and Commerce Advisory Report,” suggests that early adopters …

• Merchant processor iPayment Inc. has agreed to promote acceptance of Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.’s Samsung Pay mobile-payments service to merchants and resellers. Merchants can receive a merchant kit that includes window decals and other point-of-purchase items promoting Samsung Pay acceptance. Samsung announced its Samsung Pay reseller program in January. …

New technologies and market entrants are exerting downward pressure on acceptance costs for mobile payments. But how much longer will these costs matter? Card payments can be exceedingly complex, but in some ways they’re simple. Whip out a functioning credit or debit card to pay in a store and the …

Wells Fargo Bank N.A.’s announcement Tuesday that it would launch a mobile wallet with payments capability built into the Android version of its banking app could be a win for the bank, and herald similar moves by other banks. That’s the assessment from Daniel Van Dyke, an analyst at Javelin …

Payments startup Payzing Inc. is banking that a digital-currency integration with Uphold, a virtual funds and commodity platform, will lead to e-commerce success. San Francisco-based Payzing uses Uphold’s blockchain technology to offer online merchants an alternate payment method to traditional credit and debit cards. Consumers use their Uphold accounts to …

Pricing advantages once held by super-large acquirers—those whose merchants process more than 3 million monthly credit and debit transactions—appear to have retreated, according to the Merchant Processing Pricing Benchmark Study recently issued by The Strawhecker Group. These jumbo acquirers had, on average, the lowest amounts for their processing and authorization …

By controlling debit interchange and supercharging the administrative state, the Durbin Amendment has inflicted immense harm, says Eric Grover. With virtually no debate, the Durbin Amendment was sold as pro-consumer, pro-small bank, and pro-merchant—a political trifecta. Widely understood to be bad for politically unsympathetic large banks, U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin, …

A handful of arcane mathematicians way back in the 18th and 19th centuries aspired to invent a useless mathematical theory that would shine for its beauty alone, unstained by practical applications. It was called number theory, and it stood useless and shining until late in the 20th Century, when this …

• The Merchants Payments Coalition, a lobbying group for merchants on payment issues, attacked a Harvard University research paper as “just plain wrong” after the paper argued the debit-interchange caps in the Durbin Amendment to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act drove up banking costs for consumers. • Terminal maker Ingenico Group …

• Merchant processor North American Bancard Holdings introduced its Inovio Payment gateway service; NAB says Inovio’s name is taken from the word “innovation” and that the service, which includes a virtual point of sale and hosted checkout solutions, will open new markets for the company. • Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has changed …