For two years, Google Inc. and Verizon Wireless have been at odds, with Verizon blocking the online search giant’s access to SIM cards on Verizon devices for Google Wallet. But on Thursday Google released a new version of its Android mobile operating system that not only slices through that Gordian …

In a bid to forge closer ties to the increasingly important business of creating and marketing mobile apps and other software products, PayPal Inc. this week announced it is waiving transaction-processing fees for nascent developers in a new program it calls Startup Blueprint. The offer is limited to $50,000 in …

With interchange costs ravaging their balance sheets, most merchants will tell you they’d far rather take cash than cards. Not Split Bread. In fact, the San Francisco sandwich shop doesn’t just discourage cash, it plain won’t accept it. Cards only, please. “Cash is expensive,” David Sliverglide, chief executive of Split …

In its latest gambit to commercialize instant payment settlement, Dwolla Inc. on Tuesday unveiled a service that will let users pay online merchants using credit rather than their own money. The service, which the Des Moines, Iowa-based alternative-payment processor is calling simply “Credit,” is intended to accelerate progress toward faster …

Merchant processors can expect federal regulators to continue cracking down on their industry, Robert O. Carr, chief executive of Heartland Payment Systems Inc., predicted in a speech Wednesday at an acquiring-industry conference. The reason for stepped-up federal oversight, Carr said, is that independent sales organizations haven’t policed themselves effectively. He …

Clover Network Inc., which on Wednesday burst into a crowded market for tablet-based point-of-sale systems, is betting that merchants would like to choose their apps for customer service and checkout in the same way they can load apps on their smart phones. With the new Clover Station, merchants can download …

The deployment, which is expected to start later this year, is being characterized by both companies as a national rollout rather than a pilot. Paydiant’s Chris Gardner, a co-founder of the Wellesley, Mass.-based company, refers deployment questions to Subway, which refuses to comment beyond the companies’ joint press release. The …

By John Stewart As dramatic as their joint tokenization announcement was on Tuesday, key officials with Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc., and American Express Co. cautioned on Wednesday against far-reaching industry speculation about how the announcement might affect or relate to other standards, including near-field communication (NFC) and the Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) …

JPMorgan Chase & Co., which this spring stopped selling Visa gift cards through its network of branches, has now quit the business entirely. The decision comes weeks ahead of the biggest selling season of the year for gift cards but doesn’t surprise some observers, who point to the challenges recent …

All eyes in the payments business were riveted on Brooklyn earlier this month as lawyers wrangled in federal court over the proposed credit card interchange settlement. What many interested parties—including most observers in the courtroom that day–may have missed, however, is that the hearing brought to light for the first …