Fraud and data security trends can change by the minute, often making it difficult to pinpoint a specific development as a key event during the course of a year. Not so in 2012.

Digital currency, especially Bitcoin, picked up in popularity this year as the concept began garnering positive attention from payment players — but a series of negative incidents kept the skepticism alive as well.

Total System Services has completed its purchase of ProPay.

The payments industry is no stranger to fraud, but there are some key events that stand out over the course of 2012 — and threaten to spill into 2013.

Mortgages performed better in the third quarter than a year ago but quality has tapered off since the second quarter, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said.

If the timing were ever perfect for combining mobile payments or virtual gifting and a drink at a bar, the holidays and New Year's Eve in particular would be it.

D'mai Urban Spa in Brooklyn, N.Y. loves rainy days because it sees more customers when the weather is dreary. The Park Slope shop gleaned the information from Swipely's technology, which collects data on every customer that swipes a card in the spa.

McDonald's is adding more tap-and-go acceptance at its payment terminals worldwide.

Google’s mobile wallet appears to be staggering to the finish line of 2012. After all, it was a year that started with a reported security breach and is ending with speculation that the search-engine giant will add a plastic card to the otherwise entirely digital wallet.

OGDEN, Utah – America First Credit Union here has selected Atlanta-based Cardlytics for its new marketing platform.

It's been a rocky year for digital currencies. Facebook began phasing out its Facebook Credits while Bitcoin continues to suffer a bad reputation. However, there are some promising developments on the horizon, with experienced payments providers joining in the digital currency game.

The Google Wallet we see today is a much different product from what we had a year ago. Here are the major changes that took place this year, and the challenges Google faced — and still faces today.

BMO Financial Group's Bank of Montreal is working with Monitise PLC to develop mobile money services based on Monitise's technology.

JPMorgan Chase's recent deal to buy the merchant-offer provider Bloomspot Inc. will expand the ways in which the largest U.S. bank by assets presents offers to customers.

Reloadable prepaid card customers are gaining more touch points from which they can get their bank account queries answered.

2012 will be remembered as a year of record member growth, as the year profitability returned to most CUs, and as the year real estate values began to again inch northward, even in Sand States.

As many open their wallets and donate to a variety of charitable causes during the holidays, con artists and fraudsters are lurking online, using various scams to take funds intended for worthy causes.

For a company that has manufactured point-of-sale terminals in the UK since 1989, Thyron Systems Ltd. admits it has done so in a fairly quiet manner.

At a pop-up market in New York's Union Square Park this week, locals and tourists squeeze past each other as they make their way through rows of candy cane-striped tents, perusing merchants' products as hurried commuters coming and going from a nearby subway entrance dart through the crowd.

Citigroup’s 2G card, developed with technology from Dynamics, promised to revolutionize the way consumers paid with plastic. But the product remains in pilot testing mode more than two years after the partnership was announced and more than a year after Citi reportedly aimed to mass-market the card.