Financial institutions, processors, and regulators have been moving toward systems that speed up electronic payments, but ironically their success in replacing paper checks with electronic processing may undermine their efforts. That’s because image exchange, the process by which paper checks are replaced by electronic images for clearing, has driven down …

Cover Story By John Stewart Putting the Silk Road and Mt. Gox disasters behind it, the Bitcoin train is picking up speed. But what’s the real destination? If you want to get an idea of how far Bitcoin has come, take a look at what people are buying with it. At …

Components Biometrics in electronic payments didn’t have much life until last year, when Apple’s Touch ID and other applications gave the technology a shot of adrenaline. What’s next? It’s Act II for biometrics in payments. The now-defunct Solidus Networks Inc., better known as Pay By Touch, dominated Act I for …

Endpoint The proposal would do some useful things, but that advantage is outweighed by its—and the Bureau’s—disadvantages, says Eric Grover. Rule by regulatory mandarins is not only unconstitutional, it suppresses payments competition and innovation, and consequently consumer choice and value. On Nov. 13, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released its …

Two days before Christmas, Google Inc. quietly filed a federal lawsuit against Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc., alleging the card networks violated antitrust law by setting “supracompetitive” interchange rates from 2004 to 2012. The unusually sparse, three-page suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, asks …

Retailer organizations are lambasting an Independent Community Bankers of America survey that blamed retailers for breach costs that totaled $90 million at The Home Depot Inc. this year. In a letter to the ICBA and bearing Monday’s date, the chief executives of the Retail Industry Leaders Association, National Retail Federation, …

Breach-notification laws, misbehaving merchants, and online sales tax legislation are just three potential hotspots for legislation and regulation in 2015, advise payments industry attorneys. Long a wish-list item for many, a uniform, national breach-notification law could see enactment in 2015, thanks —unfortunately—to the flurry of large-and small-scale payment card data …

Since 2012, investors have poured $407 million into Bitcoin startups, with three-quarters of that sum flowing into the cryptocurrency just this year, according to figures compiled by CoinDesk, a Bitcoin newsletter. But now at least one expert is expressing doubts that these investors will see much of a return—if any—on …

MasterCard Inc. opened up its payment network to third-party software developers in 2012 and since then has participated in a number of regional “hackathons” in which developers create applications that link to MasterCard network services. Now MasterCard is expanding its footprint in the developer space by sponsoring what it calls …

Remember host card emulation? You might have lost sight of this variant of mobile payments based on near-field communication amid the flood of publicity Apple Inc.’s SIM-based Apple Pay service generated this fall. But HCE never went away, and now Royal Bank of Canada is making a bid to put …