Rumors from the past few years that Amazon.com Inc. was building a smart phone bore fruit Wednesday when the online retailer revealed the Amazon Fire, a mobile device built to ease the mobile commerce experience on its Web site. It may herald another way to shop Amazon, but it …

By Jim Daly n The surcharge-free Allpoint ATM network will begin offering deposit-taking services to customers of U.S. member financial institutions at 2,500 ATMs in 7-Eleven Inc. stores and other locations, Allpoint owner Cardtronics Inc. said Wednesday. n The deal represents a new way for Cardtronics, which owns or operates …

Payment-gateway services provider Digital River Inc. announced Monday that it is adding Bitcoin as a payment option for its small and mid-sized U.S. e-commerce merchants. The Minnetonka, Minn.-based firm thus apparently becomes the first U.S.-based gateway to support the leading virtual currency. n “Bitcoin continues to attract more mainstream attention,” …

The technology to deposit checks into prepaid cards or mobile wallets using a smart phone is less than two years old, but already the channel is proving to be 33 times more prone to fraud than mobile deposits into bank accounts, according to data from Fidelity National Information Services Inc. …

Best known for providing wireless card payments for vending machines and unattended locations such as coin laundries, USA Technologies Inc. (USAT) is challenging Square Inc. and other mobile-payments providers in a move to get more mileage out of its specialty processing system. After introducing its mobile services last year, the …

  Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will be among the first retailers, if not the first, to offer store-branded credit cards with Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chips when its new cards bearing a MasterCard Inc. logo are issued this month. That’s well in advance of an October 2015 deadline from the major card networks …

Point-of-sale terminal maker and payment-services provider VeriFone Systems Inc. says it will cut its worldwide workforce by 500 full-time-equivalent employees, or about 9%, by year’s end as it continues to streamline operations in a fast-changing payments market. While it will be paying $30 million in severance, the San Jose, Calif.-based …

  Payment card data remains a top target for criminals, but personally identifiable information, such as birth dates and addresses, is growing in favor among them, finds the 2014 edition of the Trustwave Global Security Report. Based on an analysis of 691 data-breach investigations conducted in 2013 by Chicago-based security-services …

Bitcoin may remain volatile and controversial, but the digital currency holds enough potential that it is starting to attract seasoned payments professionals, particularly in the business of merchant acceptance. Witness Bitnet, founded in January by a pair of former executives with payments processor CyberSource Corp. to make it easier for …

Apple Inc. is making a change in the mobile point-of-sale hardware it uses at its 254 U.S. retail stores. In an exclusive deal, the consumer-brand manufacturer has begun using mobile POS devices produced by VeriFone Systems Inc., the San Jose, Calif.-based payment-terminal maker says. Apple outfits its employees with mobile …