Mobile Wallets

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews With consumers spending more and more time on retailers’ shopping apps, it was only a matter of time before merchants with proprietary charge card programs began offering a digitized version of those cards within their apps. On Monday, that time arrived as store card processor Synchrony …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews While many observers have lamented the apparently slow growth in consumers’ adoption of mobile payments, that doesn’t mean more consumers aren’t using mobile devices each year to buy things. It also doesn’t mean users aren’t getting more comfortable buying bigger-ticket items via mobile channels. Surveys by …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews U.S. consumers are becoming more aware of mobile payments, which could potentially increase use of the burgeoning digital-payment method. Indeed 56% of them are “extremely aware” of the technology, finds the 2016 North America Consumer Digital Payments Survey from Accenture. In 2015, the figure was 52%. Only …

• Mobile e-commerce grew 60% last year to reach $120 billion, with 70% of that total coming through browsers (50%) and apps (20%) accessed via smart phones, according to a new report from Javelin Strategy & Research. • Routine usage of mobile devices to make payments remains flat with last …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews While many experts have cited anecdotal evidence that more consumers would adopt and use mobile wallets if they could earn, manage, and redeem

• Payments provider TransFirst, a unit of Total System Services Inc. (TSYS), and Raintree Systems, which provides specialized practice-management software, formed a partnership that sees TransFirst as the integrated payments provider in Raintree’s software. • Following its decision earlier this week to halt production, sale, and exchange of its troubled …

Kohl’s Corp. joins the ranks of retailers with their own mobile-wallet services with the launch this week of Kohl’s Pay. Menomonee Falls, Wis.-based Kohl’s said the barcode mobile-payment service exclusively uses the private-label Kohl’s Charge card as the payment mechanism in more than 1,100 Kohl’s stores. To use Kohl’s Pay, …

By Jim Daly@DTPayment News Nearly two years and thousands of comments after issuing its draft regulation, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued its long-awaited final prepaid card rule Wednesday. The 1,689-page document, almost double the size of the draft rule the CFPB issued in November 2014, largely follows what the …

• A federal judge in California has allowed an antitrust case to move forward against American Express Co., Discover Financial Services, MasterCard Inc., and Visa Inc. The case was filed in March by Florida merchants as a class-action suit alleging the networks had conspired to shift chargeback liability from banks …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews For years, pundits have said consumers trust banks more than any other entity when it comes to payments options, but that doesn’t mean financial institutions are always delivering the most innovative services. Now a review of mobile-banking and -payments offerings indicates even the nation’s biggest banks …