Might the Bitcoin digital currency be heading toward legitimacy among skeptical regulators and law-enforcement officials? Testimony at a U.S. Senate committee hearing Monday indicated that government may be ready to make peace with Bitcoin and, by extension, other new digital forms of payment, though if and when these new systems …

How to improve the U.S. payment system? Figure out a way to make electronic payments faster and more secure, as well as a system that would connect various closed-loop payment networks with hundreds of millions accounts. And reduce regulation, too. Those were some of the ideas bandied about Thursday at …

In two moves to attract and retain merchants, Square Inc. on Wednesday announced that it has eliminated holds on merchant deposits as well as deposit limits on U.S. transactions, and will drop a monthly pricing plan that the mobile-payments processor says merchants didn’t like. The new deposit policy applies to …

Should Discover Financial Services sell its network business? That’s the intriguing question raised by an analyst at investment-banking firm Keefe, Bruyette & Woods in a report assessing how mobile devices and related technologies are rapidly reshaping the payments industry. Sanjay Sakhrani, a managing director at New York City-based KBW, argues …

By Jim Daly A summer poll of payments executives found that less than a third think Bitcoin and other so-called math-based virtual currencies will greatly change how money is moved within 10 years. But majorities, some strong, also think that Bitcoin will spur responses from PayPal Inc., the big wire-transfer …

By Jim Daly The deep divide within debit networks about bringing Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip cards to the United States was on full display Monday at a conference in which a Visa Inc. executive hinted that Visa might be open to a delay in a major EMV deadline. But an executive …

By Jim Daly An injunction that puts New York State’s ban on merchants’ credit card surcharges on hold could be a prelude to a bigger legal assault on states’ surcharge restrictions. If pro-surcharging merchants prevail, their actions could add some oomph to a provision in the pending settlement of unrelated …

Taking a cue from its Bluebird prepaid card for customers of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., American Express Co. today relaunched its Serve prepaid card with new features, more reload locations, and new retailer partners along with no reload fees at 14,000 7-Eleven and CVS/pharmacy locations, and a $1 monthly fee that …

Durbin Amendment critics have long accused merchants of pocketing the billions they’ve saved since the amendment’s highly controversial debit card interchange price controls took effect two years ago Tuesday. Now, however, retailers are rolling out a study estimating that merchants passed on $5.86 billion in Durbin-related savings to consumers last …

When it comes to payments, the United States might be considered the land of the gap, according to a Federal Reserve assessment issued earlier this month. The assessment is the first of a three-part research study aimed at spurring the modernization of U.S. electronic payments, which many public-sector researchers and …