One of the nation's biggest independent sales organizations may be putting itself up for sale, indicating a possible thaw in an icy mergers-and-acquisition market for merchant processors. Reuters reported on Wednesday that Troy, Mich.-based North American Bancard has hired investment bank Deutsche Bank to advise it about a possible sale. …

If consumer confusion is holding back mobile payments, a startup called XipWire Inc. figures it has an answer. The five-person Philadelphia company earlier this month launched a text-based service that lets handset users pay merchants as well as other individuals. But while other more established payments companies have already started …

On the Back Burner in Congress, Interchange Heats up in California Proposed regulation of interchange is stalled in Congress, but California lawmakers are investigating the controversial revenue generator for credit and debit card issuers that merchants ultimately pay. It's not clear yet, however, whether the informational hearing held this week …

With merchant acquirers on the lookout for new ways to manage and motivate sales agents in a difficult economy, processor United Bank Card has launched a program for independent sales organizations that furnishes qualified merchant leads and also sets up appointments with those merchants. The new program specifically supports an …

The cost of data breaches rose slightly last year, but breaches resulting from computer hacking incurred by far the highest losses, according to a new report from privacy and data-security research firm Ponemon Institute LLC. The average cost per compromised customer record rose to $204 in 2009 from $202 in …

The biller-direct channel of paperless bill payment is growing faster than the so-called consolidator channel that consists largely of bank and credit-union Web sites, though not by much, a new report from Aite Group LLC says. The report also says average transaction sizes are increasing and that the biller-direct vendor …

The growth of online commerce in recent years has given rise to a number of payments-related trade groups, not to mention the PCI Security Standards Council, the oversight body of the Payment Card Industry data-security standard. Now a new one has come onto the scene, one is dedicated to furthering …

PayPal Inc. this week reported a vigorous response from developers to its new open platform and posted strong results in the fourth quarter. More than 12,000 software developers have signed up so far to use new application programming interfaces (APIs) PayPal introduced in November as part of an effort to …

A 35-store deployment at Best Buy Co. Inc., announced late last week, could be the start of a major breakthrough in bill-payment kiosks for TIO Networks Corp. The Vancouver, B.C.-based processor says the machines, which have been live for about four months in a four-market trial in the Atlanta, Las …

The choices available for merchants eyeing mobile commerce expanded this week when wireless-payment technology provider Apriva Inc. unveiled two applications that turn smart phones into mobile-payment terminals. Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Apriva is differentiating itself in the booming m-commerce marketplace by claiming space as a full-service software and services provider for merchants …