Economy

The buzzy credit card consolidator, at least in its initial incarnation, doesn’t render wallets redundant or, even, allow the consumer to do anything they can’t already.

The copier company-turned-business processing outsourcer for banks and other companies is testing a new option for at-home agents: pods, complete with work desks and video capabilities, that are designed to serve as a private workspace for remote staff.

Square has updated the design of its Square Register app in an attempt to improve user navigation and provide a consistent experience across different operating systems such as Google's Android and Apple's iOS 7.

PayPal's freshly announced support of in-app payments for Uber and McDonald's illustrate that the eBay unit is fast adapting to a world that demands more of its payments technology vendors.

Nomad 2.0, a second-generation mobile EMV chip-and-PIN card reader from AnywhereCommerce, is reportedly smaller, lighter, less expensive and more useful than its 18-month-old predecessor.

PayPal is moving into more modern marketplaces through a deal with car-service company Uber Technologies Inc.

The Electronic Transactions Association plans to keep expanding its advocacy, educational and networking efforts in the coming year.

As a fast, low-cost payment system, Bitcoin provides healthy competition for legacy banks. It's also a bulwark for financial privacy and freedom of speech.

Lew Goodwin, head of Green Dot Bank, and Alex Sion, president of Moven, hope to draw market share away from traditional banks with their digital banking offerings. One method: telling consumers at all times where their money is.

With their regulatory status, refined customer identity procedures and global infrastructure, banks could offer bitcoin exchange services and lead the modernization of financial services. Instead, they’re freezing Bitcoin entrepreneurs’ accounts.

The Electronic Transactions Association plans to keep expanding its advocacy, educational and networking efforts in the coming year, the trade group’s CEO says.

When Isis launched its mobile wallet nationwide this month, it also launched a new interface. Here's a look at what new users see when they sign up.

Isis, the mobile wallet venture led by AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless, is launching nationally after extended public tests.

TSYS and Womply, a big-data startup, are nearing their goal of providing Womply’s Insights platform to 10,000 of TSYS’ clients by the end of the year.

Merchants and payment vendors who never bother to change the default password in sensitive systems are getting fresh attention from the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council.

Square has eliminated holds and deposit limits for manually entered transactions in the U.S., and is marketing these changes to frustrated PayPal users.

Even if it takes the payments industry months to respond to Google's use of Host Card Emulation, which simulates the signal from a Near Field Communication chip, the technology is a potential game changer.

Google Inc. sent a few tremors through the payments industry when announcing its newest Android operating system can perform contactless payments without high-level access to NFC hardware. No one could blame SimplyTapp CEO Doug Yeager if he were cheering Google on from the sidelines.

SaaS-based technology provides a blended approach to remittance processing that enables financial institutions to outsource infrastructure responsibilities, while retaining the management of transaction processing, bank deposits and receivable updates.

Big players are entering the merchant cash advance business and the industry's smaller players are maturing. Meanwhile, the market is growing with the help of automated clearinghouse transactions.