Consumers continued to make retailer tills ring in the first quarter, increasing sales, minus automobiles and fuel purchases, at a 4.5% growth rate over the same period in 2014, finds Visa Inc.’s latest Retail Spending Monitor. Overall retail sales growth, include automobile sales, was a modest 1.2%. The largest …

Five big players are slugging it out to win what has proven to be all-too-elusive: consumer and merchant adoption. Here’s a close look at the Big 5’s strengths and weaknesses. (Editor’s Note: This is the first part of a two-part examination of the current landscape for mobile payments. Look for …

Visa Inc.’s branding and marketing strengths were what won Costco Wholesale Corp. over from American Express Co. in a set of exclusive acceptance and cobrand agreements announced early in March, according to Visa chief executive Charles W. Scharf, who spoke Thursday afternoon during a conference call to discuss Visa’s results …

Merchants have spent years battling card-acceptance fees, so they’re turning a jaundiced eye toward a proposal to speed up payments on the nation’s automated clearing house network. That’s because the same-day settlement proposal, floated in December by NACHA, the ACH’s rules-setting organization, contemplates a so-called interbank fee for each zippier …

Chip card acceptance is far from ubiquitous six months ahead of the U.S. liability shift. As October’s big EMV liability shift approaches, just how ready are U.S. merchants to accept the chip cards that are so common elsewhere in the world? Estimates vary, but as of early spring the state …

Merchants that have spent years battling card-acceptance fees are turning a jaundiced eye toward a proposal to speed up payments on the nation’s automated clearing house network. That’s because the same-day settlement proposal, floated in December by NACHA, the ACH’s rules-setting organization, contains a so-called interbank fee that, for some …

A gas-station and convenience-store chain is proving you don’t have to sell fancy coffee concoctions to generate impressive results with a mobile app. The program called SmartPay from Cumberland Farms, which operates nearly 600 stores in eight Northeastern states, enrolled 100,000 customers in the first 45 days after its 2013 …

Gasoline retailer Cumberland Farms, which operates nearly 600 stores in eight Northeastern states, is proving you don’t have to sell fancy coffee concoctions to generate impressive results with a mobile app. The program, which Cumberland calls SmartPay, enrolled 100,000 customers in the first 45 days after its 2013 launch—a response …

Jim Daly It’s been two-and-a-half years since a Visa plan marked the unofficial start of the conversion of U.S. card payments to the EMV chip card standard. Will recent data breaches speed up the conversion’s snail’s pace? While still a Congressman, current Chicago mayor and former White House chief of …

As they began their work, some Federal Reserve Board governors expressed uneasiness with the task Congress assigned them in 2010 through the Dodd-Frank Act: implement the debit card regulations called for in the sweeping law’s Durbin Amendment. In March, however, the Fed expressed enough satisfaction with its handiwork to declare …