Cards

Wells Fargo & Co. won its bid to throw out a judge's order that it pay California customers $203 million for manipulating debit-card transactions to boost overdraft fees.

The payments industry is no stranger to fraud, but there are some key events that stand out over the course of 2012 — and threaten to spill into 2013.

D'mai Urban Spa in Brooklyn, N.Y. loves rainy days because it sees more customers when the weather is dreary. The Park Slope shop gleaned the information from Swipely's technology, which collects data on every customer that swipes a card in the spa.

McDonald's is adding more tap-and-go acceptance at its payment terminals worldwide.

Google’s mobile wallet appears to be staggering to the finish line of 2012. After all, it was a year that started with a reported security breach and is ending with speculation that the search-engine giant will add a plastic card to the otherwise entirely digital wallet.

It's been a rocky year for digital currencies. Facebook began phasing out its Facebook Credits while Bitcoin continues to suffer a bad reputation. However, there are some promising developments on the horizon, with experienced payments providers joining in the digital currency game.

The Google Wallet we see today is a much different product from what we had a year ago. Here are the major changes that took place this year, and the challenges Google faced — and still faces today.

JPMorgan Chase's recent deal to buy the merchant-offer provider Bloomspot Inc. will expand the ways in which the largest U.S. bank by assets presents offers to customers.

Reloadable prepaid card customers are gaining more touch points from which they can get their bank account queries answered.

Marqeta is taking its rewards prepaid card and wrapping it around a program to encourage consumers to spend at restaurants in their hometown.

At a pop-up market in New York's Union Square Park this week, locals and tourists squeeze past each other as they make their way through rows of candy cane-striped tents, perusing merchants' products as hurried commuters coming and going from a nearby subway entrance dart through the crowd.

Citigroup’s 2G card, developed with technology from Dynamics, promised to revolutionize the way consumers paid with plastic. But the product remains in pilot testing mode more than two years after the partnership was announced and more than a year after Citi reportedly aimed to mass-market the card.

MasterCard Inc., already facing at least 12 U.K. lawsuits after European Union regulators outlawed cross-border card fees, was sued by Deutsche Bahn AG and J Sainsbury Plc.

President Barack Obama signed two bills on Dec. 20 that will protect information banks provide to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and eliminate a requirement on ATM fee notices.

After enjoying strong growth in its credit card business in 2012, Discover Financial Services is investing some of those returns in a more diverse range of products.

As many individuals open their wallets and donate to a variety of charitable causes during the holidays, con artists and fraudsters are lurking online, using websites equipped with payments technologies, text messaging schemes and other methods to scam well-meaning do-gooders out of funds intended for worthy causes. It’s an ever-growing problem being addressed by e-commerce industry participants, law enforcement and other groups.

It is not likely manufacturers and owners of ATMs will experience a more interesting – or challenging – year than 2012 any time soon.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to acquire online coupon site Bloomspot Inc. for $35 million to bolster its credit card division, according to a memo.

The popularity of the Square payment-card reader has sparked a new market for accessories — smaller versions of the cases and sleeves people commonly buy for the iPhones which Square readers attach to.

Voltage Security, an encryption vendor, is touting Voltage Secure Stateless Tokenization technology, which the company says provides merchants and payment processors with a new approach to protecting card data.