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.

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

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift, has the ability to oversee security on its network and demand far more of its members to coordinate those efforts. But its current structure may not be the best suited to do that.

Merchants sued Visa and MasterCard in 1996 when the card networks forced them to "honor all cards," and though the suit settled in 2003, the wounds are reopening with the spread of mobile wallets.

PayPal's split from eBay was supposed to sweeten its appeal to merchants, but it’s also stoking rivals in the payments industry — in particular Visa CEO Charlie Scharf.

Consumers using mobile wallets or mobile banking apps are generally more engaged with their banks or retailers, creating a richer behavioral profile — and fraudsters are looking to exploit this by taking over these users' devices and, by extension, their bank accounts.

EMV certification provider Fime has received EMVCo approval to support the use of its global test tool for the development of payment applications that use a handset's secure element.

U.S. banks, already troubled to put in place the alliances necessary to operate in Asia and other parts of the world, have even more to worry about in light of investigators' allegations that North Korea played a role in the cyber attacks on Swift partner banks throughout Southeast Asia as well as the Bangladesh account at the New York Federal Reserve Bank.

Merchants are increasingly frustrated over how the EMV deployment has interfered with their legally guaranteed options for PIN debit transaction routing and authorization — and since the government gave merchants this right, the Merchant Advisory Group is appealing to the government to take a look at how things have played out.

Financial services technology provider FIS is providing UnionPay prepaid cards for U.S. consumers traveling to Asia.

With banks worldwide feeling the heat of recent cyber attacks against Swift messaging participants, and the financial telecommunication cooperative's reputation taking an even bigger hit, Swift is making public a five-step plan to tighten security measures.