Kate Fitzgerald

While more consumers are using smartphones to pay bills and conduct other financial transactions, a good portion worrying about security are staying away, according to a Federal Reserve Board study.

The window of opportunity to get away with questionable fees on reloadable prepaid cards may be narrowing.

In merchants' eagerness to use mobile devices to attract new business, many are inadvertently creating new openings for credit and debit card fraud. And fraudsters have noticed.

The U.S. is already lagging other countries in its conversion to a secure chip-card format. And if Canada is any example, the U.S. may continue to lag despite the aggressive deadlines set by the card networks.

As some large retailers work on their own mobile payment initiative, they'll still be interested in other programs such as Google Wallet and Isis.

The expanding array of U.S. cards that use the secure EMV standard now includes the first cobranded hotel card equipped with a chip to make overseas travel easier.

Barclays' U.S. unit became the latest credit card lender to benefit from Bank of America Corp.'s crash diet, as it bought a $1.3 billion Sallie Mae credit card portfolio.

Discover's Pulse network is the latest offer person-to-person payment capabilities from Obopay. But widespread consumer demand seems to be lacking, as does a clear business case for financial institutions.

Yet another emerging payment scheme sees an opportunity to claw at the soft underbelly of legacy point-of-sale payment systems, this time putting carriers — not banks — in control of the payment accounts.

American Express is dangling another lure to hook its small-business cardholders on social media as a promotional channel: $100 worth of Twitter advertising.

The emergence of several new prepaid debit card programs and growing national distribution of major prepaid card brands is helping to generate marketplace interest in buying and selling prepaid card portfolios.

By 2016, Javelin expects the total number of U.S. tablet owners to reach 87 million, or 40% of consumers.

The recession left its mark on many industries, but if it had a silver lining for 7-Eleven, it may have been the opening it created to get into a more-profitable array of financial-services products in response to shifting consumer demand.

Citigroup announced an upgrade to its online banking application for Apple's iPad that includes what Citi says is the first such robust iPad credit card account-analysis application.

The Zappos data breach, wherein thieves stole partial credit-card numbers from the shoe-marketing giant, may demonstrate that merchants have taken key steps to prevent the theft of full account numbers.

"Wallet" doesn't actually provide mobile payments, but collects rewards points for other mobile wallet programs.

The number of companies caught in data breaches exposing consumers' credit, debit and bank account numbers is growing, but the best way to make amends to customers is not yet clear.

Many companies still cling to time-sapping policies of checking transactions manually for mistakes and abuse. That is changing as more commercial-card issuers offer card-auditing programs designed to catch errors and variations from corporate spending policies automatically.

The credit card industry's total revenue fell to $154.9 billion in 2011, as borrowing grew sluggishly and issuers struggled to overcome regulatory restrictions, according to advisory firm R.K. Hammer.

The economy may be crawling back to normal in some sectors, but credit card industry revenue continues to fall, according to one longtime observer.