Seeking to create a more fluid market for merchant portfolios, two entrepreneurs have created a Web site to showcase assets and broker deals. Boston-based Merchantportfolios.com, which went live about a month ago, is attracting what Lane Gordon, one of the partners, refers to as a “double-digit” number of users browsing …

Taking a cue from Discover Financial Services, travel-and-entertainment card leader American Express Co. on Monday said that it had enlisted processor First Data Corp. to book new small and mid-size merchants. But unlike Discover's recent pacts with First Data and other big merchant processors that involved sales of Discover-owned merchant …

Euronet Worldwide Inc., which on Thursday made public a stock offer valued at $1.65 billion for rival money-transfer company MoneyGram International Inc., has rejected an offer from MoneyGram to discuss the possible combination of the two companies because of a condition MoneyGram wanted to impose that would have stopped Euronet’s …

In its seventh action against a payment processor since 2004, the Federal Trade Commission along with seven state attorneys general announced this week they are suing a Lake Mary, Fla.-based check and automated clearing house processor that extracted millions of dollars from consumers by processing fraudulent payments for a suspect …

Evidence that the battle for supremacy among alternative-payments providers remains intense arrived on Wednesday with Google Inc.'s announcement that its Checkout service will continue to process transactions for free through January. “Considering how busy this time of year is for you,” says Checkout product marketing manager Gavin Chan in a …

Cardtronics Inc., operator of the nation's largest non-bank ATM network, completed its initial public offering of stock on Monday and began trading Tuesday on the NASDAQ stock market, but only after cutting the size of the deal in a stormy stock market. Houston-based Cardtronics announced its planned IPO in September. …

At the stroke of a pen, Bill Me Later Inc. has not only become the sole third-party alternative payment vehicle accepted by the world's largest retailing Web site, but it also receives an injection of capital as that site, Amazon.com Inc., takes an undisclosed equity stake in the Timonium, Md.-based …

PIN debit transactions are growing significantly faster than signature debit payments. Checks processed electronically are approaching half of all checks paid. And transactions on the automated clearing house are growing faster than any other form of payment. These are among the more surprising results of the Federal Reserve's tri-annual payments …

In a development that could long complicate the introduction of commercial services allowing consumers to make point-of-sale payments with their mobile phones, mobile network operators say they will derive POS payment revenue chiefly from consumer transaction fees. According to research released this week, some 83% of carriers responding to an …

Growth in the new back-office conversion, or BOC, electronic-check code far outpaced growth of all other automated clearing house transaction categories in the third quarter, but don't get too excited yet. BOC only went live March 16, so its 238% increase to 840,743 transactions came off a very small base …