Three months after coming to light, the massive exposure of 40 million card accounts at Target Corp. still has the payments industry and consumers talking about what should be done to prevent this happening again. In the United States, that is.

As city governments seek out new payments technology, they may show less interest in standalone products.

McDonald's customers throughout Sweden can now pay for their meals with their phone using Seamless' QR code-based mobile wallet, SEQR, from within the McDonald's app.

PayPal has added 15 partners to its Startup Blueprint program, expanding the network's reach to 5,000 startups.

First Data Corp. has appointed Frank Bisignano as the Atlanta-based company's chairman, adding to his role as chief executive officer.

FICO plans to release a new broad-based scoring model this summer that helps lenders analyze a consumer's credit risk with greater accuracy.

EBay has been adamant that its auction and payments businesses are best kept united, but if activist investor Carl Icahn succeeds in his mission to split off PayPal, eBay probably would not exit the payments business completely.

Chase Merchant Services has developed technology that could have helped its parent company, JPMorgan Chase, deal with the hefty task of reissuing 2 million cards in the wake of the massive Target data breach.

Beacons, or Bluetooth Low Energy transmitters, are seeing a burst in popularity as components of mobile payment systems. The devices, which can be roughly the size and shape of a nightlight, allow retailers to detect a mobile app user's presence in the store.

MasterCard and Visa have formed a new group to improve efforts in the U.S. to migrate to the EMV-chip cards other security methods.

A 64-year-old physicist, identified by Newsweek magazine as Bitcoin's creator, was chased by reporters through Los Angeles and denied any role in the digital currency, saying he first heard of it three weeks ago.

Clinkle Corp., a San Francisco startup that specializes in mobile transactions, has appointed Josh Brewer as its vice president of design.

The Electronic Transactions Association is lobbying Congress to enact a uniform national data breach reporting standard that would replace a welter of contradictory state and local rules.

The Swedish e-commerce firm Klarna, which offers a service that lets customers make online purchases and pay for them later by invoice, has completed its purchase of the German payment network Sofort.

Knab, a branchless bank based in Amsterdam, is aiming to attract 250,000 customers by 2017 through the promise of smoother payments.

Sellers of big data have a big problem with accuracy, a new report from a consumer advocacy group finds.

Bitcoin's mysterious inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, has apparently been discovered by Newsweek reporter, Leah McGrath Goodwin. And I'm torn.

Yapital Financial AG has signed a five-year agreement with security and payment gateway provider ReD to deliver fraud protection services for its European payment system.

Wirecard, based in Munich, Germany, is supporting mobile ticketing services from sunhill technologies GmbH, which allows motorists to pay for parking from a smartphone.

A new partnership between online shopping service provider Billeo and mobile billing firm Danal aims to give smartphone shoppers fewer hoops to jump through when making a purchase.