Jeffrey Green

Through local partnerships, Western Union Business Solutions is bringing its business-to-business funds-transfer service to Chile, Cyprus and Jordan, enabling businesses and organizations in all three countries to make international payments faster.

As banks have added checking-account fees to counter reductions in debit card revenue, consumers have responded, too, by streamlining their wallets and closing dormant or less-used accounts, new research shows.

Wright Express Corp. continues to expand its global presence, acquiring a 51% interest in Unik SA, a privately held provider of payroll cards in Brazil, for approximately $21.9 million.

PayPal and Square allow their mobile-wallet users to pay by checking in at merchant locations with an app that transmits their photo to the merchant for authentication. With ShopKeep POS, PayPal is showcasing this feature at a New York film festival.

A common criticism of daily-deals providers such as Groupon and LivingSocial is that merchants using those services generally don't always receive return visits or sufficient data to use in designing long-term customer-loyalty plans.

DeviceFidelity is relaunching its Moneto mobile wallet, and this time around it lets users transfer funds to other Moneto users' prepaid accounts.

Motorola Employees Credit Union has extended its contract with Discover Financial Services' Pulse electronic funds transfer network, enabling holders of its Visa check cards to use their PINs to pay for purchases nationwide and to withdraw cash at Pulse's network of more than 380,000 ATMs.

Harland Financial Solutions has offered financial institutions limited ATM and point-of-sale debit support for some time, but its clients had to look elsewhere for merchant, credit card and fraud-prevention services. Now they don't have to.

A payments technology provider is enabling acquirers, independent sales organizations and agents to offer a prepaid MasterCard to their merchant customers and share with them a portion of each purchase.

Consumers want their bank to provide them their first mobile wallet because of their trust in the institution. But, at least in the UK, no wallet provider has thus far addressed all of consumers' concerns with mobile payments, new research shows.

All eyes have been on Square this month with its investment from Starbucks and its new pricing option, but Intuit says it still has an advantage in mobile payments that Square can't match.

Securitized credit card charge-offs in July rose from the previous month, but the jump was due to one-time factors. Charge-offs should resume their downward trend this month and reach about 4% by the end of the year, according to Moody's Investor Service.

A Pennsylvania-based start-up is working to expand the availability of local merchants' gift cards through software that makes virtual versions for online use. The goal is to open traditionally local sales to the rest of the country.

When credit card issuers find their portfolios aren't living up to expectation or within the strategy they set for them, they often put them up for sale. Could debit card issuers do the same?

Dunkin' Donuts likes to brag that its coffee beats Starbucks in a national taste test. Now it aims to beat its rival in mobile payments as well.

If the Shazam electronic funds transfer network had its way, smart cards issued with EMV chips would require a single PIN that would both open the chip and route the transaction for settlement. But "that's still under discussion," an exec says.

As Wright Express explores ways to incorporate mobile-payment initiatives, it is beginning to test products outside the U.S. first before launching them here, according to a top executive at the fleet card provider.

Issuers exempt from the regulatory caps on debit card interchange are exploring the chance to grow their business-debit initiatives, stealing customers from larger rivals that now see such programs as unprofitable.

Improved market conditions likely sparked Target's announcement last week that it is in talks with "several well-qualified partners" interested in buying its credit card portfolio.

In buying Venmo for $26.2 million, Braintree plans to bring its one-click shopping experience to the startup's mobile wallet.