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While many still see Bitcoin as an unrealistic payment method, venture capitalists say there are clear use cases for the decentralized cryptocurrency in micropayments, international remittance and charity.

Some consumers in London reportedly experienced problems with the contactless payment system U.K. retail giant Marks & Spencer recently expanded into all of its 644 stores.

The timing couldn’t be better for the new advisory board of the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council to include several European voices.

Corporate payment company Wex has entered a partnership with travel services provider Grupo Transhotel to broaden travel payments services.

Sam Yam was the college roommate of Jack Conte, half of the indie band Pomplamoose. Together, they founded Patreon to help artists like Conte raise funds from fans online.

Payments technology provider ZooZ has developed a product that combines mobile payments with advertising.

Interchange fees often take the spotlight in discussions about card acceptance costs, but they are just one of many factors in the increasingly complex system that determines the price merchants pay for taking plastic cards.

Leaf, which offers a tablet specifically for in-store card payments, has added new features designed to ease user experience and attract third-party developers.

Square has taken its biggest shot yet at traditional payment terminal manufacturers with Square Stand, a new card reader built to house an iPad that can be used in place of a stationary point of sale terminal.

PayPal will offer free payment processing through the end of 2013 to merchants that “trade in” their cash registers and adopt mobile point of sale technologies, in a move to entice small merchants to adopt digital payments.

Visa Europe Ltd. plans to "significantly" reduce the fees it sets for processing cross- border credit-card payments in a bid to allay European Union competition concerns, the bloc's antitrust watchdog said.

Earlier today Groupon POS, a mobile payment app for merchants using iPads as point of sale systems, was released on iTunes, but the app has since been pulled from the app store.

Visa is adding electronic capabilities to its Visa Offers rewards program, leveraging online and mobile technology to bring offers closer to the point of sale.

Roam, a Boston-based Ingenico subsidiary that sells mobile commerce technology, will partner with iPayment to sell a range of mobile payment services to merchants.

Typically, I don't cover or analyze so-called payments innovations that merely embrace and extend the legacy infrastructure, but a new middleware startup, CardFlight, could actually operate as a payments "air traffic controller" because its code sits directly between the consumer and the processor.

Simon Haslam is becoming president and CEO of Elavon at a time of extreme stress for payments processors, which face nimble competitors, new payment standards and high-profile security risks.

NorsePayments wants to make it harder for card thieves to perform fraudulent card-not-present transactions.

The $45 million prepaid card crime spree, recently revealed by law enforcement agencies, is the latest in a long string of hacks on payment processors.

Facebook Connect is an increasingly prevalent way for Internet users to skip registration for other websites by using their Facebook credentials instead — and to WePay, it's also a tool for fighting payment fraud.

Southwest Airlines, Pacific Convenience & Fuels LLC, RaceTrac and Brinker International Inc. have joined the retailer-driven effort to establish a mobile wallet for merchants and consumers, the Irving, Texas-based MCX announced May 9. Brinker is the parent company of Chili’s Grill & Bar and Maggiano’s Little Italy.