The Coming Challenge of ‘Tethered’ Money Gideon Samid – Gideon@AGSgo.com When Alice pays Bob $10 using any of the payment systems discussed and analyzed in this magazine, what really happens? Is there a flow of currency in the electronic veins of the payment system? No! What “flows” from Alice to …

Peter Lucas The creature of the nation’s biggest wireless carriers dumped its payments-network strategy a year ago, and now things are looking up for its mobile wallet. The key difference: an emphasis on offers and rewards. It won’t be long before the eyes of the payment industry focus on Salt …

Lauri Giesen As EFT networks hunt for new business in the era of the Durbin Amendment, MoneyPass is expanding beyond its comfortable ATM space to link banks to point-of-sale PIN-debit services. Most of the headlines in the general press about the Durbin Amendment in the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial-reform law focused …

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 …

The Federal Reserve Board on Tuesday released data about banks’ debit card interchange income now that the Durbin Amendment is in effect. Not surprisingly, the numbers show that interchange for regulated card issuers plunged. The nation’s leading retailer trade group took the occasion to decry the Fed, even though merchants …

A little-noticed new Georgia law creates a new type of bank dedicated solely to merchant acquiring that could radically transform how the acquiring business works in the U.S. Enacted at the behest of Global Payments Inc., the big Atlanta-based merchant processor, the law enables a non-bank acquirer to own its …

Among card networks, payment processors, point-of-sale terminal manufacturers, and even issuers, the coming of EMV chip card payments to the U.S. has an aura of inevitability on par with Mitt Romney securing the Republican presidential nomination. But just don’t tell that to one critically important sector in electronic payments: merchants. …

Vending machine payment-network operator USA Technologies Inc. has instituted a two-tier pricing option that gives machine owners the ability to offer discounts for cash. But the Malvern, Pa.-based company says early results show many consumers still prefer card payments even if paying by cash would save them some small change. …

  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 …

  A new certification program could offer merchant-acquiring professionals and their employers some much-needed credibility. A fundamental industry mindset might need to change for the program to succeed, however.   bY Karen Epper Hoffman   When it comes to standards for employee qualifications and knowledge, the merchant-acquiring community is very …