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Branch staff may provide credit and debit cards right away to customers under a new instant-issuance service from Fiserv.

Banks and credit unions that have watched from the sidelines as the likes of Square, PayPal and Intuit built a mobile-payments market from scratch now have their own product to offer — a product merchants can't get off a retail-store shelf or from an independent sales organization.

Advanced encryption methods, mobile payment security and various other technologies figure to be major topics once again when the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council's participants meet this week.

Discover is pushing aggressively to be at the heart of many mobile-payments initiatives. It's doing a lot that its rivals are not — but there are a few ways it might lose ground.

Royal Bank of Canada, the country's largest lender by assets, agreed to buy the Shoppers Optimum credit-card portfolio from Bank of America to extend its MasterCard offerings.

MasterCard has acquired Truaxis Inc., a Silicon Valley start-up that crunches payment data to target special offers and discounts from merchants to debit and credit cardholders.

The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council plans to recruit more soldiers in its ongoing war against fraudsters and cybercrooks. A new program allows any qualified individual to become a certified PCI Professional.

Visa cardholders will be able to receive immediate fashion offers via text message under a mobile-offers test Visa is conducting with Neiman Marcus.

VeriFone's stock price tumbled after the maker of payment terminals reported third-quarter sales that fell short of analysts' estimates, citing unfavorable currency swings, competition in Europe and a fire in Brazil.

MasterCard became the first payments network to issue a license to a Myanmar bank as the Southeast Asian nation moves toward integrating with the global financial system after decades of military rule.

Google, like its mobile-pay rival Isis, relies on phones built with Near Field Communication chips to support its mobile wallet. So the growing number of NFC-equipped phones should give the Google Wallet a strong boost — shouldn't it?

Wright Express, a leading issuer and processor of fleet and other prepaid cards, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Fleet One for $369 million in cash from private equity firms LLR Partners and FTV Capital.

Ingenico continues to pursue U.S. market share to capitalize on the breakup of rival payment-terminal maker Hypercom last year, and wireless terminals are a key part of that strategy.

Cards for Discover Financial Services will be issued in Europe for the first time through an expanded partnership between the credit card company and Russian Standard Bank.

Online marketplace Etsy is putting more marketing muscle behind its PayPal alternative, Direct Checkout, as it waives processing fees this month and makes Direct Checkout a requirement for accepting its virtual gift cards, which launch next month.

The Dan Beard Council of the Boy Scouts of America has begun using a mobile card reader from VeriFone in its Annual Popcorn Sale.

Awareness of contactless card payments in the UK has nearly doubled in the past year, resulting in more than a million payments per month, according to research that provides plenty of food for thought for the U.S. and other countries where such cards are available.

Square has stolen the spotlight — after convincing Starbucks to switch to Square for processing, the mobile-payments vendor gave other merchants the option to accept cards for a flat $275 monthly fee. How can a rival mobile-pay provider compete?

A common criticism of daily-deals providers such as Groupon and LivingSocial is that merchants using those services generally don't always receive return visits or sufficient data to use in designing long-term customer-loyalty plans.

VeriFone is making good on its original promise to open up its Square-like mobile card reader, Sail, to developers.