Payments

Starbucks Corp. is adding video screens to the drive-thru lanes of 2,400 cafes in the U.S., an attempt to revamp a decades-old ordering system that has become central to how restaurant chains interact with customers.

This week marks the fourth anniversary of the "Durbin amendment," a defective law directing the Federal Reserve to impose price-controls on debit interchange fees.

Amazon.com has been one of the most active companies working to remove friction from payments. This summer, it reached the finish line, removing payments entirely from a portion of its catalog.

The changing demands of consumers who are increasingly mobile, and the emergence of disruptive technology, are changing the payment model for financial institutions.

Results from the largest U.S. bank, and the first major player to report on its latest quarter, showed widespread revenue strains and only added to questions about the industry's growth prospects in the near future.

Kerv, a London-based developer of a payment-capable ring, has reached its funding goal on the Kickstarter crowdfunding site.

Merchants that sell digital goods each spend an average of $10.1 million a year on fraud-related costs — and many expect fraud and chargeback costs to rise in the coming months in the wake of the EMV chip card migration at the point of sale.

Dallas' transit system has launched a two-year project to enable contactless payments, a move the project team hopes will boost transit use and mobile wallet adoption, two areas in which supporting infrastructure is growing faster than consumer adoption.

When Apple revealed that Starbucks plans to accept Apple Pay in its U.S. stores, the move spoke less to Apple's persuasiveness and more to the fallout of the country's ongoing shift to EMV security.

EMV card acceptance has often been pitched as a catalyst for mobile wallets, since the terminal upgrades needed to accept EMV-chip cards could also enable contactless mobile payments. But mobile and EMV are not always on the same path.

Apple Inc. is rolling out its mobile-payments service for select Starbucks Corp. stores by the end of the year, and will reach 7,500 company-owned stores in 2016, the coffee chain said in a statement. KFC stores and Chili’s Grill & Bar will make Apple Pay available in next year as well, Jennifer Bailey, the Apple vice president in charge of the service, said at the Code/Mobile conference Oct. 8.

The British government and a trade association are trying to nationalize open loop contactless payments for transportation, a project of staggering scope designed to provide seamless rider transactions for buses, trains and local mass transit systems.

Mobile person-to-person payment systems are poised to grow to about 126 million adult users by 2020 with nearly 60% of all mobile device owners using the service, according to newly published data from Javelin Strategy & Research.

Fifth Third Bank has formed a partnership with cloud-based payment and digital banking provider Bottomline Technologies to provide electronic payment services to the bank’s business customers.

Samsung may have a hard time convincing users of Samsung Pay that a breach of its LoopPay technology by Chinese hackers has nothing to do with payment card data or the security of the mobile wallet.

Credit card networks and issuers have done a poor job in explaining the implications of the just-passed Oct. 1 deadline for moving to EMV chip-and-PIN cards, leaving many small businesses confused, lawmakers said Wednesday during a hearing on Capitol Hill.

U.S. homeowners continue to take advantage of rising house prices to dig themselves out of the hole created by the Great Recession.

The major card networks operate from a position of strength as among the first movers in providing tokenization, but they must move with the market if they want to hold that position.

When Cumberland Farms said this month that it had processed $1 billion worth of gas via its decoupled debit card over the course of nearly three years, it was the latest example of the power of the decoupled debit card. And yet, other than Target's RED card, decoupled debit has barely moved beyond the convenience and petroleum segment.

Banks say the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau plan to ban arbitration clauses for individual claims will aid trial lawyers, while consumer advocates say the move is overdue and may not go far enough.