Annual Field Guide to Alternative Payments You’ll need a fair amount of memory on your hard drive to keep track of all the comings and goings in the bubbling world of alternative payments. By now, our Field Guide to Alternative Payments needs no introduction. It’s one of our most popular …

  PayPal’s Triangulation Strategy   It was Visa Inc. that popularized “It’s Everywhere You Want To Be” as its slogan years ago, but these days it appears to be PayPal Inc. that’s living up to the old tagline.   First, the San Jose, Calif.-based eBay Inc. unit established itself as …

Surpassing the 1-billion mark for the first time represents “a real milestone for the industry,” Brian Russell, an SPA representative, said on Monday at the Cartes North America conference in Las Vegas. Russell is a senior vice president at Giesecke & Devrient, one of the SPA’s members. The other five …

Google Inc. late on Tuesday announced a solution for a security flaw in its mobile wallet that allows hackers to gain access to wallet owners’ prepaid accounts. Google also said it had, on Monday afternoon, restored the ability to load funds on new prepaid cards. In response to the flaw, …

The nation’s largest transit operators are moving toward so-called open-fare payment systems that will enable riders to pay fares with just a tap of a contactless bank card at a subway turnstile or a terminal on a bus. Replacement of old fare systems, however, is not going at nearly the …

  Leading payment processor First Data Corp. reported on Wednesday that its merchant-acquiring operations are enjoying a temporary profit lift and its Star electronic funds transfer network has won more than 20 new contracts from financial institutions as a result of the Durbin Amendment. But whether those new contracts actually …

The surging popularity of the smart phone has revived the digital wallet, and now Google, Visa, AmEx, the wireless carriers, and a wide assortment of other providers are jockeying for dominance in this nascent business. By Peter Lucas Still trying to make sense of the digital-wallet landscape? You\'re not alone. …

  Discover can point to some major triumphs since it was launched by Sears a quarter-century ago, not least its success in taking on Visa and MasterCard. But a fast-changing payments landscape offers no assurance of future success. Discover’s plan: It pays to network.   By Jim Daly     …

  Open-fare payments for public transportation got a big boost when the Chicago Transit Authority announced it had awarded a $454 million, 12-year contract to Cubic Transportation Systems to build and maintain a payment system that accepts contactless cards. The CTA, which provides about 500 million rides a year, thus …

  By Karen Epper Hoffman   Next year may be the year of NFC. Then again, it may not be. In the meantime, a slew of startups have some alternatives to think about. Ever hear of Starbucks?       Near-field communication technology (NFC) may have taken a few strides …