Jim Daly The Royal Canadian Mint held a first-of-its-kind competition this year to spawn ideas for virtual cash. Could some of these ideas solve the problem of the high cost of low-value electronic payments? From Silicon Valley to India, almost the entire world is bubbling with new ideas for electronic …

Money transfers can bring in new customers, new revenue, and repeat business, but only if the service provider has your back, says Merrick Theobald. If this all makes it seem that entering into international electronic payment services is complicated, it’s not. Merrick Theobald is vice president for marketing at iSend …

Karen Epper Hoffman With strong brand appeal abroad, online merchants in the U.S. are pursuing overseas sales as never before. Two big hurdles are currency management and fraud risk. Tommy Bahama saw an opportunity abroad. Executives at the purveyor of island-oriented clothes and home décor knew that their brand would …

A new Georgia law allows non-bank payment processors to charter their own merchant-acquiring banks. Will this charter upend the traditional sponsorship model in the U.S.? By Jim Daly Already a major center for payments companies, Atlanta’s gravitational pull in the merchant-acquiring industry could strengthen thanks to a new Georgia law. …

  It was announced with considerable fanfare almost a year ago, but since then little has been heard about the person-to-person payment service created by three of the nation’s top banks. Is clearXchange at risk of falling behind the competition? By Linda Punch When three powerhouses in financial services and …

Financial institutions have much to gain from fees and cost savings if they offer person-to-person payments and get it right, according to representatives of three leading P2P networks who spoke on a panel at a banking conference on Monday. The keys to getting this relatively nascent payment form right lie …

Virtual Currencies: Bust-Out Ahead? Witness the recent travails of the euro if you want proof of how hard it is for any new currency, even a physical currency backed by multiple governments, to attain and retain widespread usage and acceptance. The obstacles blocking the new breed of electronic currencies from …

n A payments executive for Sinclair Oil outlines her frustrations with data security—and argues for a major upgrade to EMV. by Trinette Huber We’ve all been hearing a lot about EMV, or chip card technology, lately as some banks and merchants actually issue chip cards and install the terminals that …

Typically thought of as a mobile technology for physical merchants, NFC could soon be converting card-not-present transactions into card-present payments for e-commerce retailers. That prospect has important implications for processors and developers. By Bill Pittman Every e-commerce retailer would like to reduce its cost of payments, slash its fraud, and …

A 5-year-old law that bans U.S. banks and processors from handling online-gambling transactions won’t stand in the way of a U.S. Justice Department opinion released last week that appears to put the federal government's imprimatur on intrastate online betting. The DoJ on Dec. 23 released a 13-page memorandum giving states …