Kate Fitzgerald

Align Commerce, a San Francisco-based firm focused on cross-border payments for small and midsize businesses while expanding the use of blockchain technology to move currency, has hired Intuit veteran Jay Hansen as compliance officer and general counsel.

Vodafone is extending M-Pesa to Ghana, making it the 11th country to offer the mobile money service to unbanked consumers in developing markets in Africa, India and Europe.

American Express’ small merchant card acceptance has been generally low, though that performance could improve through a partnership with Moneris, Canada’s largest acquirer.

The U.S. is a long way from widespread adoption of EMV, but security analysts say the boom in online shopping—plus a surge in consumers' use of mobile devices for holiday purchases—will make it easier for fraudsters to hide their moves as they redirect their efforts from retail to online channels.

Mobile payment users are still in short supply, and the growing range of options may be seen as too chaotic for consumers who haven't yet used a mobile wallet.

Black Friday will mark a new milestone this year, when mobile devices for the first time will account for about half of all online purchases during the first weekend of the holiday shopping frenzy, according to a new study.

Merchants have long known card network rules permit them to charge a different price for accepting cash versus cards, but outside of gasoline retailers, most merchants haven’t done much about it.

A penny per transaction may be enough to cover issuers' costs of preventing credit and debit fraud now, but that math could change if fraud incidents spike.

KeyBank will soon get to test the power of years of investments to its operations and redesigns to rewards as it moves its credit card operation back under its own roof.

Citigroup is doing away with its cobranded ExxonMobil MasterCard and on Aug. 31 will introduce a new private-label gas card whose name, the ExxonMobil Smart Card, could be a bit misleading to payments-industry insiders in that it is not an EMV chip-card.

As social media becomes a more important part of its marketing strategy, JPMorgan Chase lining up partnerships in the hopes of getting its upscale credit card users communicating more online.

Citigroup is selling another of its Diners Club card-issuing businesses, this time unloading its operation in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland to Affiniture Cards, a UK-based private investor group.

When people can easily book appointments with small merchants, they don't always show up — and this practice has sparked demand for a system that also accepts deposits, so that merchants can be compensated for no-shows. That same technology can make it easier for companies to accept payments through Facebook pages.

Credit card portfolio sales this year have snapped back to a pace last seen before the recession took hold. Their prices are also rising.

SCVNGR, the mobile-payments provider behind LevelUp, will use its latest venture-capital infusion to sign up national restaurant chains as it ramps up efforts to expand nationwide.

U.S. payment-card industry rivals have decided to come together, at least for a few days, to better navigate the gargantuan task of migrating to the modern EMV chip-card standard by 2015.

Many small-business owners don't understand social media, and American Express Co. is making increasing efforts to instruct them in the best uses of such sites. A focus of Amex’s efforts is its forum on LinkedIn, where bird-supply vendor Mitch Rezman participates.

Many large merchants expressed outrage at the apparent laxity of the Federal Reserve Board's finalized rule that will allow non-exempt debit card issuers to collect a 1-cent fraud-prevention adjustment on debit card transactions.

Fiserv is adding a host of mobile tools to its UChoose Rewards bankcard loyalty program, starting with a mobile app that lets customers redeem their rewards points on the spot in stores.

The shift to EMV chip-card technology over the next few years could trigger other organizational problems for U.S. banks and merchants.