A courtroom food fight of sorts has broken out between big merchant processor Heartland Payment Systems Inc. and a leading hospitality-industry technology provider supported by a network gateway owned by No. 1 merchant acquirer Chase Paymentech Solutions LLC. Princeton, N.J.-based Heartland today said it has filed a federal antitrust lawsuit …

Results from an Aite Group LLC survey of merchant acquirers and independent sales organizations released on Monday show that processors consider “margin compression,” high interchange, and dealing with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard as the top three challenges facing the acquiring industry. The results, part of a report called …

In a development that could lend considerable momentum to efforts to bring PIN debit to the Internet, Costco Wholesale Corp. is investigating at least three technologies that would allow the retailing giant to accept PIN debit cards for payment on its Web site, according to sources familiar with the matter. …

USA Technologies Inc., a Malvern, Pa.-based vendor of card-reading devices for vending machines, this week announced another pact with MasterCard Inc. that will put USA Technologies' e-Port G6 magnetic-stripe and contactless payment card readers in 4,000-plus more vending machines. The deal represents the fourth between the two companies in the …

Though Capital One Financial Corp. and prepaid card manager NetSpend Holdings Inc. late on Monday said they had “mutually agreed” to call off Cap One’s planned $700 million cash acquisition of NetSpend, the move may have been a consequence of the deal’s hefty price tag, says an analyst who follows …

Retailers and analysts have been giving forecasts ranging from ho-hum to downright pessimistic for the upcoming holiday spending period, but the outlook for online retailers almost certainly is better. Growth rates in electronic-commerce remain near 20%, the U.S. Commerce Dept.'s Census Bureau reported on Monday. The Census Bureau's quarterly report …

An outside manager with restructuring experience, Thomas Lumsden of FTI Consulting Inc., is now running financially troubled biometric-payment provider Pay By Touch under terms of a Delaware court order signed Friday, San Francisco-based Pay By Touch announced on Monday. The Delaware Chancery Court in Wilmington appointed Lumsden, senior managing director …

PayPal Inc. on Tuesday will make available to its entire account base a so-called virtual debit card it has been testing with a large number of account holders for nearly 18 months. The new product, which PayPal has dubbed Plug-In, carries a MasterCard Worldwide brand and allows users to buy …

The ax is falling at First Data Corp. two months after the huge processor's $29 billion leveraged buyout by private-equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. Greenwood Village, Colo.-based First Data announced Thursday that it is cutting 6% of its workforce, or about 1,700 employees. Thanks to recent acquisitions, however, …

Qualcomm Inc.'s $210 million cash deal for Firethorn Holdings Inc., announced on Wednesday, is expected to accelerate Firethorn's movement toward mobile payments and hands Qualcomm a significant stake in the rapidly developing markets for both banking and payments via handsets, according to Tripp Rackley, chief executive of Atlanta-based Firethorn. “All …