Judging from new Federal Reserve data, April was a month of joy for merchants and credit card issuers as consumers spent more on their credit cards, but for consumer advocates and financial advisors it may have been a month of angst as they saw foolish consumers take on too much …

Merchant processor Square Inc. is about to introduce a card reader that supports Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay mobile-payment service, Apple announced Monday. Apple Pay also will support retailers’ loyalty programs, according to Jennifer Bailey, Apple Inc.’s vice president of Internet services. The announcements came at the start of Apple’s Worldwide …

By John Stewart As participants in the 40-year-old automated clearing house network get ready to implement same-day clearing capability, network growth continues to percolate, according to the latest numbers from NACHA, the Herndon, Va.-based rules-setting organization for the ACH. Transactions totaled 4.72 billion in the first quarter, an increase of …

By John Stewart Dwolla Inc. announced Thursday morning it is eliminating its 25-cent transaction fee, effective immediately, on all transactions types. The fee, which has applied to transaction values exceeding $10, is typically paid by the receiver of the money. Des Moines, Iowa-based Dwolla processes person-to-person payments as well as …

Two dominant payments companies—Visa Inc. and VeriFone Systems Inc.—are teaming up to better secure the varying ways consumers shop across digital and face-to-face channels. Announced Wednesday, the deal lets San Jose, Calif.-based VeriFone, which makes point-of-sale hardware and security products, gain access to Visa’s CyberSource platform that global merchants use …

The Gimlet Eye Last month, in a little essay called “So, Where’s the User?” we asked a question that’s often overlooked in all the sound and fury over mobile payments: Will the consumer ever show up in appreciable numbers to use a mobile device for payment, particularly at the physical …

Everybody remembers the Durbin Amendment’s caps on debit card interchange. But the law also sought to help merchants by increasing competition for debit card traffic. It did this with a transaction-routing requirement, which has been in effect now for three years and mandates that merchants have a choice of at …

When you think about payments, you think about Suzy handing over a bunch of dollar bills or Jimmy sliding a credit card through a slit. Most payments today look this way. But that is about to change. One of the powerful attributes of digital money is that it divides to …

  Many small merchants have no clue about EMV, and among those that do, many are unpersuaded. Here are some ideas to overcome those—and many other—hurdles before and after the liability shift. Inertia can work with you or against you. When it comes to persuading smaller merchants to adopt EMV-compatible …

Getting mobile payments to click with merchants and consumers will require new models for digital marketing. And doing it right will take lots of money and time. (Editor’s Note: This is the second part of a two-part examination of the current landscape for mobile payments. Part One, which sized up …