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American Express said it may be forced to refund customers as bank regulators weigh enforcement actions based on consumer-protection laws.

Bloggers and tech reporters have been quick to give Visa a swift kick in the pants for the failure of a point-of-sale system at London's Wembley Stadium during Olympic soccer matches this week. But Visa says, and Wembley Stadium has acknowledged, that the breakdown at the stadium occurred on a system that Wembley owns and operates.

As competition heats up for mobile-wallet providers, the various underlying technologies are starting to show whether they have long-term viability.

Long after the 2004 unveiling of the Payment Card Industry data security standard, many merchants remain unaware of it and know little about the threat data thieves pose, says Bill Farmer, CEO of Mako Networks.

Bank of America said it will contribute a total of $738 million to settle a price-fixing case brought by retailers over credit-card swipe fees.

SCVNGR, the mobile-payments provider behind LevelUp, will use its latest venture-capital infusion to sign up national restaurant chains as it ramps up efforts to expand nationwide.

First Data, which processes about half of all U.S. card spending, recently identified that debit spending again overtook that of credit cards. Now another trend is emerging: PIN-debit use is growing much faster than signature debit and credit.

KeyBank has become the latest regional bank to bring its credit cards back in house.

As Google expands its mobile wallet to more phones and, with yesterday's update, potentially more banks, consumers have more opportunities to try it — and to encounter its limitations.

A fresh update to Google's mobile wallet allows users to make payments from any credit or debit card, a move that fundamentally changes the company's approach to working with issuing banks.

Payments security providers and mobile card reader vendors alike will watch with much interest from the sidelines as iZettle AB tries to resolve its restrictions from Visa Europe for processing Visa transactions in the company's core market.

Starting today, the mobile payments company iZettle is saddled with a major restriction in not being able to accept Visa transactions in parts of Europe. Its problem serves as an example to rivals in the U.S. and overseas.

Wright Express Corp. continues to extend the reach of its virtual cards tied to travel, announcing today a partnership with the Australian operations of Webjet.com, an electronic manager and marketer of travel and related services.

MasterCard reported a 15% jump in second-quarter earnings this morning, standing in contrast to the loss Visa reported last week due to expenses both companies incurred in offering a multi-billion dollar antitrust settlement to a merchant class action.

U.S. payment-card industry rivals have decided to come together, at least for a few days, to better navigate the gargantuan task of migrating to the modern EMV chip-card standard by 2015.

Many small-business owners don't understand social media, and American Express Co. is making increasing efforts to instruct them in the best uses of such sites. A focus of Amex’s efforts is its forum on LinkedIn, where bird-supply vendor Mitch Rezman participates.

John MacIlwaine, a former executive at Visa and Green Dot, has been named the chief technology officer at the peer-to-peer loan facilitator Lending Club Corp.

Visa Europe was sent an antitrust complaint from EU regulators over the fees it charges to process cross-border credit-card payments.

Record transaction processing and growth in the company's noncard businesses helped merchant processor Heartland Payment Systems generate a 44% second-quarter lift to its profits.

Juan Benitez, the new chief technology officer of Braintree Inc., expects to play a key role in the continued growth of the online and mobile payments provider.