Payment processing

The 25th Card Forum & Expo brought hundreds of payments professionals together in Boca Raton, Fla. to share strategies and ideas. Here's a recap of some of the most talked about subjects from the event.

Canada is now the second country offering consumers MasterCard Inc.'s MasterPass digital wallet, with an emphasis on e-commerce sites for travel, grocery and discount stores.

Elavon and Banco Santander confirmed their plan to launch a joint venture to provide merchant services in Spain.

Bank of America says it and other banks, which have a full view of each customer's financial needs, are well-positioned to succeed as mobile payments providers.

MoonClerk is a new company that's targeting a distinct segment of the payments technology market—the startups and small businesses that want to build a Web payment acceptance engine, but don't have the right tech expertise in-house.

Websites critical of a settlement that Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. reached with retailers over so-called swipe fees are misleading and must be corrected, a federal judge said.

Retailers unhappy about a proposed $7.5 billion swipe-fee settlement in a case against Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. received a momentum boost this week when the Retail Industry Leaders Association chose to opt out of the settlement.

A dramatic dip in the value of Bitcoin is not fallout from a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack, said Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox in a Facebook post overnight Wednesday. But there was indeed a DDOS attack.

Mobile payment provider Payleven is adding two new features to lure larger businesses—the ability to manage multiple chip-and-PIN card readers from a single master account and support for both mobile and stationary printer systems.

If you're looking for Swedish cash, don't go to a Swedish bank. Most of the country's biggest lenders have stopped manual cash-handling services in 65 percent to 75 percent of their local branches. They say cash is out as Swedes rely on credit cards, the Internet and mobile phones to make all their payments.

The retailer-driven Merchant Customer Exchange mobile payments venture is making a lot of noise, though it has yet to reveal its product. But since the final MCX app will interact with those made by its individual retailers, CVS Caremark Corp. can serve as an early example of the venture's potential.

OpenCoin, Chris Larsen's virtual-currency venture, announced today it has closed funding from several investors, including Bitcoin Opportunity Fund.

FamZoo says its bundled prepaid cards and online dashboard work as teaching tools, which can bridge a knowledge gap about payments and budgets, particularly among young people.

MoneyGram and First National Bank have launched their first mobile money transfer service in Africa, enabling FNB account holders to send and receive international transfers via mobile devices.

The CEO of SignaPay, an Irving, Texas-based acquirer with 14,000 merchants, says he's again taking an active role in the day-to-day business of moving the company forward.

As the Merchant Customer Exchange asserts its position in the mobile wallet market, it emphasizes that the path to a consumer’s physical wallet runs through retailers.

Mobile payment technology at restaurants is gaining favor with wait staff, who find shedding paper leads to quicker orders, faster service and higher gratuities.

The growing prepaid card sector has started to catch the eye of regulators, leaving issuers, processors and other participants in the business cycle quickly moving to maintain and improve compliance with fraud requirements, according to a panel discussion at the Card Forum and Expo.

San Francisco, Calif.-based startup Balanced says it is gaining traction with online marketplaces, the eBay-like venues where small merchants gather to sell products and services online.

The United States has long resisted adopting the EMV smart-card standard to replace magnetic-stripe credit and debit cards. But the card networks report success in the years-long push to modernize plastic payments.