Payment cards

Achieving the coveted “top of wallet” status is tough for banks, not least because their own credit and debit cards often compete with one another for priority status with the same customers.

Achieving the coveted “top of wallet” status is tough for banks, not least because their own credit and debit cards often compete with one another for priority status with the same customers.

Over the past five years, the slow-but-steady rise of mobile wallets seemed to signal the end of the plastic card era. But that's not how things played out.

The potential user base is huge. Tencent Holdings has 846 million global monthly active-user WeChat accounts, and more than 300 million have linked bank cards.

Biometrics has long had an interoperability gap. Visa is trying to address that with a new project that brings flexibility to biometric options.

Comdata says the majority of fleets are relatively small, and are underserved by most existing platforms.

By collaborating with consumers' favorite products or retailers, loyalty programs can get an extra punch.

Visa and Mastercard are teaming up with wallet providers and technology companies to accelerate payments innovation.

The card network will test a new business-to-business payment service powered by the tech beyind bitcoin.

While card issuers took a step in the right direction by replacing the fraud-prone magnetic stripe cards of the past, they made many missteps that complicated and weakened the EMV transition.

While now may not be the right time to convert card bases to EMV, CUs should be building a roadmap for how they will make the switch.