Apple Inc.’s introduction of its new Apple Pay service for its soon-to-be released iPhone 6 and the Apple Watch raised a huge number of questions in the payments industry. One of the biggest topics of speculation is just how is Apple going to make money from the service, with combines …

Is it Still Hip to Be Square? The answer, after five eventful years, is yes. But it needs to find a consumer strategy, and right now there’s no app for that. Nobody in the staid world of the payments business had ever seen anything like it before. Dozens of buttoned-down …

Unintended But Predictable The U.S. arrival of EMV virtually ensures criminals will step up attacks on card-not-present channels, which EMV doesn’t protect. So what is the industry doing to defend itself? Just about everywhere that Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip cards have replaced magnetic-stripe payment cards, greatly strengthening the shield protecting brick-and-mortar …

The Networks’ Signature Charade The card brands should stop pushing signatures and start working with merchants to implement effective authentication, says Mark Horwedel. Merchants view the EMV migration as an opportunity to eliminate an outdated process that inflicts billions of dollars in damages on consumers and merchants. Few things ruffle …

The spat between Mitek Systems Inc. and USAA Federal Savings Bank over remote deposit capture software is set for trial Sept. 8, but the trial won’t include Mitek’s patent-infringement allegations that had been a key part of the case. In other payments-related legal action, four retail trade groups and two …

Stressing such factors as the rapid growth of mobile commerce and the advantages of streamlined integration, representatives from Discover Financial Services, Mercury Payment Systems LLC, and PayPal Inc. on Tuesday urged a roomful of point-of-sale technology resellers to begin moving quickly on selling mobile payments to retail clients. “I would …

The big merchant acquirer TransFirst Inc. gave notice Wednesday that it is planning a partial initial public offering. Hauppauge, N.Y.-based TransFirst filed a registration statement, or S-1, with the Securities and Exchange Commission announcing its IPO plans and putting a tentative value of $100 million on the deal. The filing says …

The ATM Industry Association met today with members of the Federal Reserve staff to discuss making ATM debit transactions subject to the routing requirements of the Durbin Amendment to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. The association, which represents ATM independent sales organizations and other retail deployers, wants the provision because it …

Merchants like to gripe about the cost of payment card interchange and processing expenses, but relatively few have done a close analysis of what it really costs to accept the various tender types, according to an Aite Group LLC researcher. If they did, most would conclude that debit cards are …

It’s July, and what with the summer doldrums having set in, we thought it might be timely to review a few principles we’ve learned over the years about digital transactions. Some of you may well disagree with any number of these, and if you do, I hope you’ll email me …