Payments

The telco-backed mobile wallet Softcard is at a significant crossroads. Though it once saw the debut of Apple Pay as an opportunity, Apple may actually be edging its rivals out of the market, and Softcard's next move will decide not only its own fate but also the strategies of the banks and merchants that could benefit from its technology.

Visa Europe Ltd.'s full-year profit increased 30% on sharp growth of Internet payments across the continent.

The introduction of Apple Pay has also thrust Near Field Communication-based contactless payment technology out of the wings and into the spotlight.

Banks partnering with prepaid card providers face the potential of higher deposit insurance fees and other ramifications from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. classifying accounts as "brokered."

Mangopay, a white-label payment solution provider for marketplaces, has opened an office at Level 39, London's largest technology accelerator.

Apple Pay's Touch ID is the exception, not the rule. Biometric security typically requires some type of add-on hardware, a model that has struggled to get much adoption over the years.

A lot of companies are lining up to provide payment pages for e-commerce merchants, and BlueSnap is working to set its own offering apart by adding design options for checkout.

Among the many obstacles for mobile payments, the most daunting is getting shoppers to change behavior. The fact is that plastic cards have worked quite well for a very long time and consumers are quite used to them. To get consumers to change decades-old habits is far from easy.

E-commerce retailers generally target the 80 million millennial shoppers because they are more likely to buy things online and spend more money online than other demographics.

Apple Pay has secured a dominant position at the point of sale, with two thirds of all U.S. contactless payment volume coming through Apple's new mobile wallet, according to Apple CEO Tim Cook. But this may not be the boost to mobile payments that many experts have long predicted.

Mobile payment and commerce provider Mozido LLC is bringing on a former MasterCard executive as its president for global markets.

Western Union is adopting a vastly different use of Apple Pay than what banks and merchants have so far considered.

The Federal Reserve System threw its weight behind a host of standards, goals and timelines yesterday that are likely to shape the quest to build a faster U.S. payment system.

Amazon.com's decision to quietly shut down its digital wallet app last week shows an uncharacteristic caution on the part of the e-commerce giant. Merchants throughout the Web use the company's e-commerce services, but the mobile and digital payments world is considerably more cutthroat.

Intuit will integrate payment technology from Stripe to automate tax reporting for self-employed workers in the version of its tax-filing software QuickBooks targeted towards them.

The 16th hole at the Waste Management Phoenix Open PGA tour event at TPC Scottsdale has become golf legend because it is the only time on the tour in which fans cheer and jeer each tee shot as if at football game.

Smartphone-based payment systems promise to let shoppers eliminate the hassle of carrying cash and credit cards around. But even as mobile payments spread, there’s one piece of plastic people still can’t leave home without: their driver’s licenses.

The Federal Reserve System released a detailed vision for improving the speed of the U.S. payment system. It is latest step in a process meant to spur change at a time when the country has fallen far behind many nations that have adopted real-time payments.

If consumers, designers and artists led the discussion about how we make payments in the future, they would likely come out with a vastly different system than the one technologists are creating today.

The Federal Reserve System released a detailed vision Monday for improving the speed of the U.S. payment system.