Linda Punch A consensus is forming that regulations specific to mobile payments are coming, but questions about when, who will be involved, and exactly what issues they’ll address are far from settled. With mobile payments increasingly capturing headlines and consumers’ imaginations, can the attention of lawmakers and regulators be far …

Citing “ever-increasing student college expenses,” Heartland Payment Systems Inc. reported on Tuesday that it would eliminate three fees on its student-aid prepaid card. Heartland’s move comes a few weeks after the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG), a prominent consumer advocacy group, issued a report highly critical of the …

Hey, mobile-payments types: the fraudsters  are gunning for you. What are you doing to keep fraud at bay? So far, the known mobile-payments security lapses have proven to be more embarrassments than the truly damaging data breaches seen with more conventional payment methods. For example, Square Inc. initially passed out …

Lauri Giesen When the Durbin rate cap on debit took effect, it was supposed to give merchants a big break on acceptance costs. But sellers of items like soda and bus fares have seen their costs balloon, and that’s hurting emerging-payments markets. Lower costs are what most retailers should have …

Annual Field Guide to Alternative Payments You’ll need a fair amount of memory on your hard drive to keep track of all the comings and goings in the bubbling world of alternative payments. By now, our Field Guide to Alternative Payments needs no introduction. It’s one of our most popular …

  PayPal’s Triangulation Strategy   It was Visa Inc. that popularized “It’s Everywhere You Want To Be” as its slogan years ago, but these days it appears to be PayPal Inc. that’s living up to the old tagline.   First, the San Jose, Calif.-based eBay Inc. unit established itself as …

  The automated clearing house network remains a huge and critical payments player, but its initiatives don’t grab headlines like mobile payments or even prepaid cards do. So just what is the ACH up to these days? By Jim Daly For the automated clearing house, it’s tough trying to get …

  Barcodes for payments by smart phone have a proven track record and a diverse group of supporters, but many in the payments industry regard them as merely a way station on the road NFC-based mobile payments. Here’s where they stand today. By Jim Daly Sure, the techies and lots …

Amazon.com Inc. quietly killed its PayPhrase online-authentication service on Feb. 20, not quite two-and-a-half years after introducing the system. The PayPhrase credentials system allowed online shoppers to check out using only a word or phrase of their choosing and a PIN that they had registered with the Amazon Payments service. …

Historically, the payments industry has ignored the fact that not everyone who shops online has a credit or debit card. With a handful of startups providing cash processing for online transactions, that’s no longer the case. By Karen Epper Hoffman No matter how much credit and debit cards have come …