Technology

With newcomers like Square gaining momentum in mobile payments, processors are more aggressively offering customers reasons to stick with them as merchants accept more payments outside their retail stores.

When crunching the numbers, it appears Square can't possibly make a profit in its new deal to process transactions for Starbucks.

First Data has reached an agreement to provide credit card processing and related services to First Niagara Bank in Buffalo, N.Y.

Consumers continue to take their credit card borrowing more seriously. The ratio of credit cardholders 90 or more days past due on their payments continues to drop even as issuers are extending credit to higher-risk customers, according to TransUnion.

Total System Services is taking a different approach to sales by forming a joint venture with Central Payment Co.

Credit card asset-backed securities likely will remain stable for the foreseeable future because card charge-offs and delinquencies are at historic lows, consumer bankruptcies keep falling and consumer balance sheets are getting healthier, according to Standard & Poor's Ratings Services.

A bank in Vietnam claims it has tripled its account base since it began offering cards with biometric fingerprint technology in June to the country's unbanked residents.

VeriFone is supplying retailer Beall's with customer-facing point-of-sale devices that feature color displays and the capacity to adapt to changes in payments.

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.

Sites like Groupon have captured consumers' attention and loyalty in a way that credit card issuers often dream of. A few savvy payments companies have found ways to benefit from the daily-deals fad.