Like their American cousins, Canadians are rapidly adopting newer payment methods. In fact, they’re doing so even faster than U.S. consumers in some respects. The report, “Canadian Payment Methods and Trends: 2019,” released last week by Payments Canada, says contactless payments grew 30% year-over-year in 2018. Card- and mobile-based contactless …

Merchant education can be a strategic advantage if you do it right. That starts with showing merchants how they can benefit from technology. Keeping up with payment technology is not easy for merchants. As if the learning curve for EMV, which is still rolling out in some merchant segments, wasn’t …

Sitting in a meeting in New York City, Clay Wilkes put his company’s latest innovation to the test. “We onboarded a company, funded the master funding account, created an individual account, and moved funds from the master funding account, and bought a gift card on Amazon,” he recalls. “Someone in …

A leading credit-union service organization reported Wednesday that it has distributed half a million contactless payment cards through some of its members, and Mastercard Inc. has paired up with a French investment firm with an eye on bringing new fare technology to mass-transit systems. St. Petersburg, Fla.-based PSCU says it …

Twenty European banks are working on setting up a pan-European payment system to challenge Visa, Mastercard and technology companies such as Google and PayPal, according to press reports. The project is code-named PEPSI, for Pan European Payment System Initiative.In a development that signals an opening in China’s long-protected payments environment, Chinese mobile-payment giants …

U.S. merchants added 600,000 locations for EMV chip card acceptance in 2019’s first six months, and Visa issuers cranked out an additional 10 million EMV payment cards, according to new figures from Visa Inc. In its latest update on the U.S. conversion from magnetic-stripe payment cards to the EMV chip …

From back offices to the point of sale, and from digital wallets to the blockchain, fintechs are fomenting a revolution in loyalty and rewards. Here’s how that’s playing out—and where it’s heading. By Maria Arminio and Bo Berg Bank and merchant card issuers are looking for ways to distinguish their …

Dual-interface credit and debit card sales lifted CPI Card Group Inc.’s second-quarter sales figure, the company reported Wednesday. As the nation’s issuers increase their orders for the near-field communications-equipped chip cards—the cards can be dipped into a point-of-sale terminal or tapped against compatible devices to do a transaction—Littleton, Colo.-based CPI …

For banks, introducing real-time bill pay is not enough. They must also spruce up the online and mobile experience. Some are starting to, but can they finally leave the biller-direct model in the dust? It’s been a long, steady retreat for banks in online bill payment. Since 2010, banks’ share …

After about two months of not accepting mobile wallets, J.C. Penney Co. Inc. this month quietly resumed accepting them, apparently by firing up its old contactless-payment acceptance system. The Plano, Texas-based department-store chain with about 860 locations had turned off its contactless system that used an older technology known as …