Components Jane Adler The 40-year-old automated teller machine is hardly thought of as a springboard for innovation. Yet new technology is giving rise to a raft of services that promise to bring renewed purpose to the humble bank machine.   Now 40 years old, the ATM would seem to …

  Networks   Linda Punch In 2006, the No. 2  card network went public, untethering itself from decades of bank ownership. Has it worked?   What a difference an IPO can make. In the five years since it offered its stock to the public, MasterCard Inc., the world’s second-largest card …

  M-Commerce   Todd Ablowitz Yes, the PCI Security Council’s timeout on standards for mobile payments has sewn confusion and uncertainty. But that doesn’t mean the industry has to stand still.   The buzz surrounding mobile payments is gaining momentum. The influx of payments software from traditional payments providers and …

  Endpoint A few smaller banks get it, and have issued EMV cards to their customers who travel abroad. But most bigger banks are still on the sidelines. We’re still stuck with the mag stripe and all of its attendant problems because the big banks have too great a stake …

Tyfone Inc. this week launched what appears to be the first solution from a third-party vendor that allows any consumer with a mobile device to enroll in, and then use, mobile banking directly from a handset. The new product, which also features integration with Tyfone’s near-field communication (NFC) platform for …

Think Computer Corp., the startup behind the FaceCash mobile-payments system, has launched a browser-based point-of-sale register in an effort ease FaceCash integration for merchants. “The register lets any small business turn a Web browser into a cash register,” says Aaron Greenspan, Think’s chief executive and president. The product, which has …

U.S. debit card holders received cash back on just over 1 billion point-of-sale purchases in 2009, according to new figures from the Federal Reserve. That statistical nugget and others in the Fed’s 2010 Payments Study help to explain why ATM operators are struggling to keep transaction volumes up. The Fed …

Local demographics and the availability of a mass-transit system that uses contactless technology for fare payment chiefly accounted for the decision by Isis, the joint venture formed late last year and led by major wireless carriers, to launch its first pilot next year in Salt Lake City, Utah,  Isis’s head …

Trends & Tactics   No Apocalypse Now—Or Later—for Debit As Digital Transactions went to press this month, the ultimate extent and timing of the debit restrictions contained in the Durbin Amendment remained unclear. Final rules had not yet issued from the Federal Reserve, and in mid-March a bill appeared in …

Acquiring Peter Lucas The low margins earned on vending-machine sales have historically worked against card acceptance. But now, with evidence of a sales lift from cards, processors and gateways are pushing into vending harder than ever. It’s a frequent scenario: A family is out for fun at an amusement park. …