MasterCard International's PayPass contactless payment technology will be deployed at 900 points of sale for concessions inside two stadiums starting with the 2005 National Football League preseason, the card company announced today. Interest among sports stadiums in PayPass, which replaces conventional card swipes with radio signals that carry card-account data …

Washington Mutual Inc.'s decision to switch its 10.5-million-card debit portfolio to MasterCard International from Visa U.S.A., though a big win for MasterCard, doesn't necessarily herald a trend, observers say. At the same time, it throws into relief a bylaw Visa quietly put into place in 2003 that penalizes large debit-card-issuing …

A startup company says it is probably 12 to 18 months away from piloting a contactless payment card that will incorporate both chip-based radio-frequency identification and biometric authentication technology. Up to now, RFID-based payment pilots and programs have not included PINs or any other means of authenticating users. But 2-year-old …

MasterCard International announced today it will launch pilots of its PayPass electronic payment system on mobile phones from Motorola Inc. The Purchase, N.Y.-based card company says the pilots will get under way at a “variety” of unspecified locations in the U.S by the end of the year. The Motorola phones …

On Track Innovations Ltd. and Atmel Corp. announced today they have received the first order for microprocessors in “commercial quantity” for MasterCard International's PayPass contactless payment program. OTI said it also expects orders for card readers to support rollouts of PayPass cards by issuers later this year. The two companies …

Arthur Blank & Co. Inc., a Boston-based maker of plastic payment and loyalty cards, is getting into the market for cards equipped with radio-frequency-identification technology, with ambitions particularly for cards supporting loyalty programs and payments in the quick-service retail market. “We as a company are very bullish [on RFID],” says …

American Express Co. this Friday will begin adding more merchants in lower Manhattan in its test of radio-wave technology for payment transactions. Over the next several weeks, three quick-service restaurants near the card company's headquarters will begin accepting the card company's experimental ExpressPay RIFD keyfobs, which communicate with conventional card …

Target Corp.'s decision several weeks ago to discontinue its chip-based electronic loyalty program has confirmed for Visa USA that U.S. consumers are not likely to embrace new transaction technologies any time soon, whether tied to loyalty programs or not. Indeed, for the foreseeable future, the bank card network is shifting …

Although the decision by fast-food king McDonald's Corp. to shut down its test of ExxonMobil Corp.'s Speedpass contactless payment product seems to be a setback for the technology, not all observers agree. Indeed, some are convinced transactions based on radio-frequency identification (RFID) still have a bright future at high-throughput locations–maybe …

Transactions amounting to $10 or less could potentially amount to at least 10% of all point-of-sale payment transactions processed annually in North America, a bonanza of transaction volume that goes a long way toward explaining why giant card companies and small startup processors alike are chasing the so-called micropayments market. …