The stock market has had a pretty good run so far this year, but shares of publicly traded payments firms are doing even better than the overall market. A group of thirty payment-related stocks tracked by Chicago-based Barrington Research Associates Inc. posted a mean return of 23.86% for the first …

The pending $145 million acquisition of point-of-sale terminal and equipment distributor POS Portal by ScanSource Inc. will bring together two companies that provide merchants with the equipment they need at checkout counters and back offices, but which have little overlap in their customer bases and distribution channels. Founded in 2000, …

Never mind that the Democratic administration that created Operation Choke Point is gone, a Republican Congressman wants to be doubly-certain that the controversial program that tries to cut off payment services to fraudulent merchants dies. So he has proposals to kill Operation Choke Point in not one but two bills. In …

Checks currently account for almost half of business-to-business payments, but their share will decline to 34% by 2020 as automated clearing house payments surge from 32% of B2B payments today to 45% in three years. Those are some of the key results from a first-quarter survey by the Credit Research Foundation, …

With concerns about card-not-present fraud rising, e-commerce merchants have increased their usage of 19 of 21 fraud-detection tools since 2010, some by more than 30 percentage points, according to a recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. The only tool whose usage declined was 3-D Secure, which …

Seeking to leverage its brand while boosting its presence among Web merchants, merchant acquirer Square Inc. last week introduced Square Checkout, a Square-hosted system that enables consumers to pay online while providing merchants with access to the company’s technical and business services. Consumers usually don’t know, or care, which processor …

A recent report from the U.S. Department of The Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) shows a sizable increase in the number of banks and credit unions providing financial services to legal marijuana businesses. The numbers might not tell the whole story, however. FinCEN’s latest Marijuana Banking Update, for the …

Mallory Duncan, senior vice president and general counsel of the National Retail Federation and one of the most outspoken advocates for merchants on payments issues, announced Thursday that he will retire at the end of August. “Whether you’re appealing to the Supreme Court, testifying before Congress or meeting at the …

The U.S. conversion to EMV chip card payments took a step forward Thursday when fuel-pump maker Gilbarco Veeder-Root announced what it says is the first EMV chip card transaction from a fuel dispenser. The transaction took place at a 49 Fuels gas station in Burlington, N.C., at an undisclosed time. …

VeriFone Systems Inc. is best known for its point-of-sale payment terminals, but the company is growing its cloud- and software-based payment products and services. VeriFone also has made a name for itself in payment and media services for taxicabs, but that business is now on the block, company officials announced …