David Heun

A new assault on the major card brands over debit transaction routing got a boost this week when Home Depot sued Visa and MasterCard, alleging the card brands are pushing for the more expensive signature debit routing.

American Express has joined Visa and MasterCard as a major card brand offering faster authorization at the point of sale to ease the perception that EMV payments take too long.

E-commerce merchant sites powered through IBM commerce solutions will soon be able to offer customers Apple Pay as a payment option.

When Visa introduced its analytics tool to screen gas station transactions for fraud two years ago, it may not have been viewed in the petroleum industry as relevant to the expensive conversion to EMV payments at the pump.

On the surface, Walmart Canada's decision to stop accepting Visa credit cards in protest of its fees comes across as simply another conflict between the giant retailer and the card network. But it's setting the stage for something bigger.

Facebook is urging companies across the board to embrace mobile technology before another disruptor comes along and renders their organization irrelevant.

Since the introduction of Bluetooth beacons as enablers of in-store location-based marketing, many have seen a clear connection between beacons and mobile payments. As the technology evolves, the connection is not quite as clear.

Kyle Largent offered himself up as "Exhibit A" for U.S. online merchants' greatest fear: that EMV chip card adoption at the point of sale would cause fraud to spike online.

When it was created in 2006, the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council was billed as an independent body to manage the data security standards process for the payments industry. It has been under fire from merchants ever since.

Mobile wallet providers and retailers have been hunting for the magic formula to seamlessly blend loyalty and mobile payments, in the hopes that one would inevitably fuel the other. But it's a delicate recipe, and easy to get wrong.