U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., is familiar to Digital Transactions readers as the author of the celebrated (or infamous, depending on your point of view) Durbin Amendment to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. That little cherry on top of the Dodd-Frank sundae put a cap on how much interchange big banks …

A simmering controversy in the U.S. conversion to EMV chip card payments burst into the open last month when Wal-Mart Stores Inc. sued Visa Inc. The giant retailer claims that Visa is trying to make it use signature verification for some EMV debit card transactions and route those transactions over …

Its original proposition was offering Bitcoin acceptance to merchants, but now BitPay Inc. is adding a reloadable Visa prepaid card to its consumer-facing products. The card provides utility to merchants and consumers in that it will enable cardholders to make purchases at the millions of Visa-accepting merchants in addition to …

Gift cards are hugely popular with consumers, and merchants that sell them are more than happy with the customer traffic, sales, and fees they generate. But the cards have been the target of a fraud-prevention crackdown in the first half of 2016. PayPal Holdings Inc. no longer will allow items …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Ever since Apple Pay debuted in 2014, payments pundits have wondered how fast mobile payments would catch on with consumers. The near-simultaneous arrival of two rivals, Android Pay and Samsung Pay, last fall only made the question more urgent. And now data is emerging that indicates …

Merchant-services company Harbortouch Payments LLC has a new private-equity investor in a deal valued at more than $500 million. Searchlight Capital Partners L.P. announced Wednesday it made an investment in Allentown, Pa.-based Harbortouch. Jared Isaacman, Harbortouch chief executive and founder, says the deal is valued at more than $500 million, …

Canadian payment processor Beanstream says its U.S. foray is hoping to tap into its parent company’s international reach as Beanstream USA targets software developers and integrators. Beanstream’s U.S. effort—announced earlier this month—is meant to get a piece of the independent software vendor and value-added reseller market that so many payments …

Despite hiccups and hitches along the way, the conversion of the massive and highly fragmented U.S. payment card industry from magnetic-stripe credit and debit cards to ones bearing an EMV chip appears to be moving apace. The latest data from MasterCard Inc. finds the number of merchants accepting chip cards …

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 …

Independent sales organizations, merchant acquirers, and payment facilitators catering to small-business owners who have e-commerce sites now can sell them a MasterCard Inc. service to help mitigate the risk associated with card-not-present transactions. MasterCard introduced Simplify Controls Monday, a service that includes an online dashboard and app that enables merchants …