By John Stewart With Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. making headway with online merchants with their streamlined checkout services, it was only a matter of time before network rivals introduced their own versions. American Express Co. did just that Thursday, announcing what it is calling an “unwallet” to allow its …

By Jim Daly Next week’s planned split of PayPal from parent company eBay Inc. has payments investors anticipating that plenty of locked-up value and growth opportunities will be released for the online payments leader. PayPal began trading on a so-called “when-issued” basis Monday on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the …

Credit card use, even in merchant categories dominated by debit cards, appears to be growing quicker than debit card use, reports the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia in a whitepaper released Monday. The report finds that, from 2007 through 2012, credit cards’ share of payments increased 5% at gas stations …

Retailers, especially larger ones, face a contradiction: they know they need to update their point-of-sale systems to take advantage of new technologies and consumer-shopping behavior, yet most resist that urge because of the expense. That’s one of the findings from “Commerce Convergence: Closing the Gap Between Online and In-Store,” a …

You may have heard the term, “friendly fraud.” It’s no surprise, then, that there’s nothing friendly about it. And it’s quickly becoming a major problem for merchants across the globe. Friendly fraud, also called friendly-fraud chargebacks or cyber-shoplifting, occurs when a customer makes a purchase online and then files a …

The Gimlet Eye Is there a movement going on to do away with transaction fees? Here are some recent examples: Dwolla, the Iowa-based processor, said last month it was eliminating its 25-cent fee on transactions over $10, effective immediately. Payments below that threshold carry no fee, so now all Dwolla …

Point-of-sale payment card fraud will be easing off, thanks largely to the introduction of EMV chip card payments to the U.S. in the next few years. But fraudsters, according to a new report from Javelin Strategy & Research, will be back in stores armed with cards using stolen credentials from …

Mobile peer-to-peer transfer has led to ubiquitous, real-time payment in a social context. But can anyone make any money in this business? Nobody can say for sure when the first electronic person-to-person payment took place, but payments historians are pretty sure they can pinpoint the first official P2P transfer using …

Possibly as soon as later this year, the processing giant will undergo a mammoth IPO. Here, a payments-industry analyst sizes up what the company can offer investors. The world’s largest payment processor, First Data Corp., is girding for an initial public offering, likely later this year. It promises to be …

It’s a huge decision for any business, but it can be especially crucial for a small one, says Dan Leberman. Here are some important considerations to make the job a little easier. Even if you have coding experience, tackling a heavy-lifting payments integration carries substantial opportunity cost. And if you …