By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews A year ago, Visa Inc. expanded its Visa Ready program beyond mobile point-of-sale terminals to support tokenized payments on a wide variety of Internet-connected devices. On Thursday, the payments company took the next step in that plan, announcing a collaboration with IBM Corp. that will allow …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews The lingering impact of some retailers’ slow conversion to EMV chip card acceptance continued to plague prepaid card services provider Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. in the fourth quarter. Blackhawk reported late Wednesday that revenues fell short of its expectations in part because of a “continued EMV headwind” …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews ATM manufacturer NCR Corp. on Tuesday unveiled its line of SelfServ 80 Series, machines NCR says are designed for “today’s mobile-first, omni-channel consumers.” The line currently has 4 models, and several large banks and mid-sized credit unions have already begun deploying them. “There are in the thousands …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews PayPal Holdings Inc., which hasn’t been shy about laying out big money to enter new businesses, said on Tuesday it will shell out $233 million to buy TIO Networks Corp., a cloud-based processor that will deepen PayPal’s penetration of the bill-payment market. The acquisition is expected …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews Merchant-services provider Cayan released a semi-integrated mobile-payment device that accepts EMV chip card payments, the Boston-based company announced Tuesday. Dubbed Genius Handheld, the device enables clerks to accept multiple forms of payment while standing in a store aisle or at a popup location to shorten checkout queues. …

• E-commerce platform provider Shopify Inc. said it added 133,000 merchants in 2016, bringing the total to 377,500 by year’s end; gross merchandise volume hit $5.5 billion in the fourth quarter, up 94% from a year earlier. Shopify also says that since it launched Apple Pay for the Web, more than …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Brick-and-mortar retailers are struggling to keep up with online stores, but they’d struggle far less if they could better deploy in-store technology, according to a report issued Tuesday. A big issue for shoppers is lackluster customer service, which last year cost retailers $150 billion in lost …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews How enthusiastic are consumers about shopping on their smart phones and tablets? Enough that mobile commerce grew to $22.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2016, up 45% from $15.6 billion in the same period a year prior, says comScore Inc., a Reston, Va.-based data-measurement firm. That …

• Merchant processor iPayment Inc. will offer business services to its client base from cloud-based provider Company.com under a new agreement between the companies. • Merchant processor Fidelity Payment Services has selected PAX Technology as its preferred provider of EMV terminals and PIN pads. • Virtual Piggy Inc. announced it is working with …

• Canada-based RDM Corp., a maker of point-of-sale check scanners and developer of remote deposit capture software, has agreed to be acquired by check printer Deluxe Corp. for approximately $70 million U.S. in cash. • TA Associates, a private-equity firm, announced an investment in Retriever Medical/Dental Payments LLC, a payments provider for …