Acquiring

• Merchant processor Heartland Payment Systems introduced Heartland Insights, a data and analytics service for restaurants that relies on the company’s point-of-sale and e-commerce solutions. Heartland recently became part of rival processor Global Payments Inc. • Canadian payments provider Beanstream expanded its service to U.S. merchants and integrated partners with …

• Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) said it is integrating a machine-learning engine from Featurespace that will allow the processor to generate real-time decisions on individual consumers. TSYS says the speedier fraud-control processing will help prepare its clients for the arrival of real-time payments. • Plastc Inc., which markets a …

For all the talk about independent software vendors and value-added resellers as an alternative channel for acquirers to sign up new merchants, the ISV/VAR share of the market is actually quite small, according to research released last week by Annapolis, Md.-based First Annapolis Consulting. The research does indicate, however, that …

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. sued Visa Inc. on Tuesday claiming that Visa is trying to make the retailer use signature verification for some EMV debit card transactions and route those transactions over Visa’s network rather than Wal-Mart’s preferred PIN-debit networks. The suit, filed in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, …

The direct carrier billing business has been consolidating for the last few years, and on Monday the latest deal confirmed that surviving players are still willing to pay for volume. London-based carrier biller Bango said it had acquired a major rival, Danal Inc.’s BilltoMobile service, from San Jose, Calif.-based Danal, …

• PayPal Holdings Inc. no longer will provide purchase protection for transactions made on crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter, potentially dealing a blow to the nascent crowdfunding industry, CNBC reported. • In a letter to Green Dot Corp. shareholders, Harvest Capital Strategies, which owns 9.3% of Green Dot, said it …

Ouch. Merchant acquirer Square Inc. reported after Thursday’s market close that payment volume grew 45% year over year in the first quarter to $10.3 billion, but the company’s stock still fell 22% on Friday. Despite the strong payments growth, investors didn’t like a number of things they saw in San …

Pricing advantages once held by super-large acquirers—those whose merchants process more than 3 million monthly credit and debit transactions—appear to have retreated, according to the Merchant Processing Pricing Benchmark Study recently issued by The Strawhecker Group. These jumbo acquirers had, on average, the lowest amounts for their processing and authorization …

Boosted by a 45% increase in payment volume to $10.3 billion, Square Inc.’s adjusted revenues jumped 64% in the first quarter, but the merchant processor’s net loss doubled to $96.8 million on higher expenses as the company continued to invest like a startup for future growth. In its second earnings …

Independent sales organizations and merchant-services salespeople considering selling all or part of their merchant portfolios have to consider more than finding the right buyer, said a panel of acquiring specialists. While some portfolio valuations might spike as high as the 40s—referring to a multiple of the net monthly processing revenue—that’s not …