Cards

Discover's lawsuit this week against Visa stems from years of practices that have their root in the Durbin amendment's debit-routing mandates, and Visa will likely have several ways to counter its rival's allegations.

Apple Pay launched in late October, facing a few early hiccups and an unclear future. But in the month of November, Apple's strategy began to come into focus even as competitors closed in.

Seeing an opportunity to advance international and online debit transactions and take advantage of a growing mobile payment market, MasterCard is working to establish a debit card presence next year in Canada.

TIO Networks has secured a patent that allows the bill payment processor to conduct change-based transactions on reverse automated teller machines.

Diebold reached an agreement with Banco del Pacifico to deploy automated teller machines in Ecuador.

Cardpool is partnering with SCVNGR's LevelUp to give consumers an alternative way to spend unwanted gift cards.

Modern technology has turned the payments industry into a juggling act, particularly for those charged with deploying new techniques to protect payment card data.

Virtual Piggy, which provides the Oink online wallet service for their youths, will release a prepaid Discover card to extend its offering to retail stores.

I would encourage the CFPB to focus their energies on advancing the road to credit concept instead of focusing on how to restrict credit.

Biometric authentication may seem all the rage now that Apple uses fingerprint authentication in its mobile wallet, but the Bitcoin ATM provider RoboCoin has concluded that biometric technology can be more of a hassle than a help.

It's not just merchants, issuers and technology companies that are using mobile technology to sell new payment services. As a business software provider, Intuit has been uniquely positioned to link its products to a number of payment initiatives.

Square, which made a short-lived attempt at digital gift cards in late 2012, is debuting a new gift card service today with a heavy emphasis on an older payment instrument: plastic.

V-Key, a mobile security provider in Singapore, has received a $12 million investment from the Ant Financial Services Group, the Chinese financial services company that operates Alipay.

A week after making Discover the first credit card offered in its mobile bill-pay service, PreCash Inc. has already seen a spike in the use of Evolve Money, which previously accepted only debit cards.

Elan Financial Services will use MasterCard's common debit application identifier technology when processing transactions through its MoneyPass ATM network.

Consumer groups said that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was too soft in its prepaid card plan, arguing that it should have required more on upfront disclosures, banned overdraft charges, and completely severed prepaid cards from being tied to other types of credit.

Kim Kardashian may be an overexposed reality star, but she's also a tech entrepreneur with a short-lived past in the payments industry. And several companies in the Bitcoin space are repeating her biggest mistake by offering a plastic payment card.

Xapo, a bitcoin startup headed by financial services entrepreneur Wences Casares, is launching its wallet app on iOS, a move that shows the company has turned some attention to ease of use.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is set to go beyond industry expectations when it unveils a long-awaited proposal Thursday that would establish new requirements for prepaid cards.

InteliSpend in Fenton, Mo., has expanded its cash-back incentives after adding Discover and MasterCard to its prepaid network.