Credit

Visa and Citigroup, working with the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion, plan to connect governments, NGOs, the private sector and others to advance global financial access by the end of this decade. Their Financial Inclusion 2020 campaign aims to do this by increasing access to credit, savings, payment tools and insurance for people all over the world.

Jan. 27 marked the first day merchants nationwide could hit consumers with a checkout fee for using a credit card. Nothing has changed overnight, but some merchants are likely to test the waters sooner than others.

KeyBank, a unit of KeyCorp, announced plans to offer new consumer, business and commercial credit cards this year. The cards will all operate on MasterCard's network, extending a 15-year partnership that also covered debit and ATM.

Canada's right next door and has lots of English speakers, so it might seem the ideal place for American independent sales organizations to expand. But the two countries' business and cultural practices differ in ways that Americans may not expect.

London commuters are supposed to be excited about the prospect of their Tube underground rail system adding acceptance of any bank’s contactless payment card. But it may take time for them to break the habit of using the popular Oyster contactless prepaid transit card.

Mainstream consumers are still slow to adopt newer payment technology, but several cities are pushing ahead of the rest of the world.

Visa Inc. is urging its shareholders to reject a proposal by activist investors that would require the card network to reveal detailed information about its lobbying activities.

A computer hacker from the online activism group “Anonymous” was sentenced in Britain to 18 months in jail for conspiring to attack the websites of Visa Inc., PayPal Inc., MasterCard Inc. and others.

Square Inc. said Chief Operating Officer Keith Rabois has resigned, marking the departure of an executive who has helped the company grow to more than 3 million customers. Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar will become acting COO.

Synqera is trying to set itself apart from rivals in the targeted-offer crowd by using point-of-sale hardware with data collection tools that look at everything from weather patterns to the shopper's mood.

Penalty fees fell 8% among credit card issuers last year, an industry consultant estimates.

Merchants in the British Virgin Islands will soon have a new mobile card reader available to accept card payments through their smartphones.

Nearly three years after the implementation of a landmark credit card reform bill, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau faces a monumental challenge: determining whether the law helped or hurt consumers.

Citibank India announced the launch of a mobile and tablet card reading device today developed by Ezetap Mobile Solutions.

Amazon.com Inc. has added an in-app purchasing feature for games and other programs developed for the Web, Mac and PC.

Seth Priebatsch, the 24-year-old founder and head of the mobile payment system LevelUp, has made his company a serious player in the emerging payments market — yet he also sports the less-than-serious job title of "chief ninja." The nickname, he explains, has much to do with his approach to running a business.

Walmart and the other Merchant Customer Exchange members recently announced they would opt for a software-based mobile wallet instead of one based on Near Field Communication hardware. Is this a blow to NFC's future or does the technology have enough supporters to eventually change how people pay?

Many companies are trying to repurpose iPads as payment terminals. Leaf, a Cambridge, Mass.-based startup, instead created a commerce-specific tablet for small-business owners.

The U.S. Federal Reserve Board plans to get a better idea of how Americans are making payments — when they don’t use cash.

The concept of making anonymous online transactions is in the spotlight because of the prominence of the digital currency Bitcoin, but most consumers remain uneasy with the cryptocurrency's instability and risk. An alternative for the privacy-minded might sprout from Tor, or The Onion Router.