In the battle over online bill payments, biller sites have been beating bank and third-party sites handily, but now the battle has turned into a rout. Biller sites accounted for fully 73% of online bills paid by consumers last year, up from 62% in 2010, according to a report from …

Security jitters have hit the payments industry, and it’s no wonder. The arrival of new and sophisticated ways to spoof identities, coupled with the rapid rise of mobile usage for banking and payments, has created a minefield for security professionals charged with guarding accounts and the money they hold. The …

• Merchant processor Sterling Payment Technologies, a unit of EVO Payments International, has partnered with RPower Point of Sale, a vendor of point-of-sale software for restaurants, to offer an EMV solution for the hospitality industry. • Merchant processor Square Inc. introduced Caviar pickup, a new feature on its Caviar restaurant food-ordering and delivery service that …

• In separate blog posts, PayPal Holdings Inc. executive vice president Bill Ready and chief executive Dan Schulman reported the company has reached 200 million total consumer, merchant, and charity accounts. They also said the PayPal’s One Touch authentication technology has signed up 50 million consumers and more than 5 million merchant accounts, …

• Rambus Inc. introduced its Rambus Unified Payment Platform, which it says will enable mobile-wallet users to pay with credit, points, and coupons in a single transaction. • Payments provider Harbortouch Payments LLC announced a partnership with Strategic Funding Source, a merchant cash-advance provider. • Square Inc. will pay $54.8 million to Starbucks Corp. to cancel …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews Square Inc.’s stock hit a record high Thursday in the wake of a strong fourth-quarter financial report. Now the merchant processor is looking to an updated point-of-sale system for retailers called

• Puerto Rico-based Evertec Inc. said revenue in its merchant-acquiring unit declined 1% in the fourth quarter to $23.1 million while revenue in its payment-processing segment grew 0.4% to $28.9 million. Evertec announced it has an agreement to buy Chile-based EFT Group S.A., a payment processor and software company that uses the …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews It has become an article of faith that mobile payments capability alone won’t excite consumers. The challenge lies in how to meld loyalty with payments in a single tap at checkout for multiple retail chains. On Friday, Urban Airship Inc. announced an integration of its Reach …

• Royal Dutch Shell plc said it is finalizing the deployment of EMV-compliant point-of-sale terminals for inside use at more than 11,000 of its U.S. locations. Currently, almost 80% of the locations are EMV-compliant, with the rest expected this spring. As the inside-the-store project is completed, the petroleum company will shift …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews As the U.S. Supreme Court gets nearer to considering the 2012 interchange settlement, the National Retail Federation and the Retail Industry Leaders Association asked the court to let stand an settlement. The trade groups, which for the most part represent large retailers, argue, in part, that the …