Acquiring

  It’s a sobering statistic. Only 28.6% of the companies surveyed in the Verizon 2015 PCI Compliance Report were still in compliance with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard a year after a successful validation. Released Thursday, the annual report catalogs the state of PCI compliance gleaned from more than …

Point-of-sale terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc. continued to ride the U.S. EMV chip card wave in its first quarter of fiscal 2015 as sales of EMV-compliant payment card acceptance systems helped lift North American revenues by 31% to a quarterly record. The San Jose, Calif.-based company late Tuesday reported revenues …

Mobile point-of-sale company AnywhereCommerce will add near-field communications (NFC) payment capability to its mobile hardware in coming weeks, signaling a further shift along its path to becoming a cloud-based payments gateway. That’s the word from William Nichols, Anywhere Commerce’s chief executive. That strategy, implemented about six months ago when Nichols …

By Jim Daly Another sign that the U.S. EMV conversion has a long way to go emerged last week when a survey of more than 990 independent business owners by Newtek Business Services Inc. revealed that 71% of respondents were unaware of the so-called EMV liability shift coming on Oct. …

By Jim Daly The big warehouse retailer Costco Wholesale Corp. announced Monday an agreement with Citigroup Inc. to replace its current cobranded card from American Express Co. next April with a Citi-issued Visa credit card. But Costco also announced a companion agreement with Visa Inc. under which other Visa-branded credit …

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. is joining the mobile-wallet and payments fray with its expected launch this summer of Samsung Pay, a service that uses near-field communication (NFC) and technology from LoopPay Inc. it recently acquired. Samsung Pay, available on the coming Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge smart phones this summer, could …

Funding for small businesses has been an increasingly important source of revenue for independent sales organizations and other merchant acquirers, but they’re not the only parties that have noticed the market’s lucrative potential. Now, banking-technology vendors and even large merchants are getting into the game. Jack Henry & Associates Inc., …

By Jim Daly JPMorgan Chase & Co. reported Tuesday that 60,000 merchants use its in-house ChaseNet merchant-processing venture and as of January they were generating annualized charge volume of $16 billion. Merchants in the venture include United Airlines, the Marriott hotel chain, DirecTV, 1-800 Flowers, Groupon, Zillow, and Barnes & …

Many merchant-services executives have complained for years about so-called margin compression, a relentless loss of profitability driven by competition on price per transaction. But now two researchers argue acquirer profitability, far from collapsing, is actually much better than widely thought. “There has been a lot of talk about margin compression, …

Heartland Payment Systems Inc. is building a point-of-sale system reseller network in hopes it will increase the number of multiple products sold to a single merchant. Announced Friday, the program is part of Heartland Commerce, and signals a shift in Heartland’s selling strategy. The company will no longer use a …