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As it rolls out its service in Austin, Texas, and Salt Lake City, the Isis mobile-payments venture is teaming up with independent sales organizations and merchant processors to sign up merchants to accept its mobile wallet. One of those ISOs, Phoenix-based MobiSquad, currently has about 350 merchants in the launch …
Read More »An Expansion-Minded EVO Buys PowerPay And Looks to Europe With its Deutsche Bank Deal
It’s been a tad busy at EVO Payments International over the past week. On Thursday, the big independent sales organization disclosed it had bought another ISO, Portland, Maine-based PowerPay. On Nov. 29, EVO announced a deal with Deutsche Bank AG, Germany’s biggest bank by assets, under which it will buy …
Read More »By Taking a Pass on NFC, Apple Punches a Hole in a Key NFC Forecast
When Apple Inc. this fall launched its latest smart phone, the iPhone 5, without a near-field communication (NFC) chipset, the move was widely seen as a blow to the prospects for NFC as a technology for mobile payments. Now comes a report estimating just how damaging that blow could be. …
Read More »Mitek Lands U.S. Bank As a Client for Its New Mobile-Imaging Bill-Pay Technology
Mitek Systems Inc., the leading developer of software for mobile remote deposit capture, announced on Wednesday that U.S. Bank will offer its new Mobile Photo Bill Pay product to its customers in 2013. The news is a breakthrough for Mitek in taking its key mobile-imaging technology beyond its original deposit …
Read More »After Prolonged Development, A Startup Begins to Vend Prepaid Cards from ATMs
After five years of development, an ATM technology company with its eyes on the prepaid card market says its business model of selling prepaid cards through ATMs is ready for prime time. As evidence, Better ATM Services Inc. on Tuesday announced it would enable the sale of a Discover-branded gift …
Read More »To Reap Mobile Harvest, Online Sellers Must Optimize for Mobile, Braintree Exec Says
If the start of the holiday-shopping season this year has demonstrated anything, it is the new prominence of mobile in the mix of payments. But for all the talk among online merchants about mobile payments, not all will benefit equally from the trend, according to Bill Ready, chief executive of …
Read More »Apriva Extends Agreement With Visa To Offer Discounted Vending-Machine Pricing
Fewer than two months after a competitor announced a similar deal, wireless payments provider Apriva Inc. this week reported that it would continue offering pre-Durbin Amendment discounted acceptance pricing on Visa cards to vending-machine operators. Debit card interchange in late 2011 became a major concern for vending-machine operators and other …
Read More »Commentary: Not Responding to Square’s Wakeup Call Could Be Hazardous to Acquirers
By Todd Ablowitz If you’ve attended any acquirers’ conferences, tuned into industry news, or followed payments trends this past year, you’ve surely noticed a common topic: “Should we beware of Square?” Square has created quite a stir by growing in just three years from a Silicon Valley startup to a …
Read More »Merchants Appeal a Key Part of the Credit Card Interchange Settlement
Merchants opposed to the agreement settling a massive, 7-year-old credit card interchange case filed an appeal on Tuesday challenging the court’s preliminary approval of a key part of the pact. The appeal, filed by four merchants and seven merchant trade groups, comes on the same day as the U.S. District Court for …
Read More »Visa Says New Online Authentication Tool Will Cut Risk While Reducing Abandonment
With the fabled Cyber Monday shopping frenzy under way, Visa Inc. launched an authentication tool for online transactions intended to cut fraud while reducing the risk of shopping-cart abandonment. The tool, which Visa calls its Consumer Authentication Service, can be deployed by any Visa issuer starting on Monday. The network …
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