Cards

Consumers are more concerned than ever about how to protect their payment card data, but they also know they have very little skin in the game because of card issuers' zero liability policies.

Payments innovation comes quickly, and often from outside the banking industry, leading Associated Bank to create a special procedure to monitor the tech market and customer preferences.

Pock.io is allowing consumers in the U.K. to buy gift cards from large merchants such as Apple by using Bitcoin and other digital currencies.

Most issuing banks are not allowing recent retailer data breaches to change their schedules for adopting EMV-chip cards, even though Target and other companies have said they would fast-track their own plans.

While Discover has a much smaller debit-card network than Visa and MasterCard do, the upstart gained ground in 2012, as Discover benefited from new routing rules.

UniRush, the prepaid card marketer co-founded by hip hop mogul Russell Simmons, has launched a portfolio of new designs for its RushCards as part of a broader marketing and branding strategy.

Visa has developed a new service that aims to reduce prepaid card fraud.

TSYS has renewed an agreement Missouri-based Commerce Bank to handle its credit and signature debit cards, adding PIN debit services as well.

The U.S. payments industry has long agreed to disagree on the way to properly route EMV debit transactions, stalling the country's shift to chip-based cards. First Data hopes its decision to support and share Visa's technology will finally break the stalemate.

JPMorgan Chase is the first bank to adopt a new, standardized disclosure box for its prepaid cards that was developed by Pew Charitable Trusts.

The prepaid card company InComm and online payment service provider Money Online (MOL) plan to debut point-of-sale-activated prepaid cards in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.

Visa Inc. and First Data's Star Network will share Visa's technology for routing debit transactions initiated through EMV chip-based cards.

For years, the U.S. has been divided on whether EMV-chip cards should be deployed as chip-and-PIN cards or the simpler chip-and-signature. After the Target data breach drew attention to the threat of data theft, the PIN debate seems to have lost its edge but it hasn't gone away.

Target's recent commitment to fast-track its conversion to EMV smartcard technology may not trigger an avalanche of U.S. retailers doing the same, but Target's move seems to have become a catalyst to resolve the payments industry's other issues around EMV adoption.

EMV security is in the spotlight after a recent string of retailer breaches affecting magnetic-stripe card data, but many critics call EMV-chip cards "last decade's technology."

Retail giant Target Corp.'s headache-inducing data breach brings to mind the 1982 Tylenol poisoning crisis—an event that drug maker Johnson & Johnson handled with such aplomb that it restored public confidence in its medicine, altered the way retailers handle product safety and established itself as the gold standard for crisis management.

E-commerce technology provider Payza will offer an outsourced service that allows U.S. merchants to accept card payments directly into their business bank accounts.

Members of Affinity CU will receive EMV cards from the credit union during the third quarter of 2014.

Bangkok Bank Public Co. Ltd. hopes to take advantage of Thailand's easy financial infrastructure to enable a number of new payment options, such as cross-institutional person-to-person payments made from a mobile phone or an ATM.

Orange has launched its Orange Cash mobile contactless payments system this week in two French cities.