Acquiring

(An Open Letter to the Electronic Payments Industry) n On October 16, 2013, I delivered a keynote address to the Strategic Leadership Forum of the Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) on my views of the evolution of the payments industry.  At the beginning of this address, I told the audience that …

In his Oct. 23, 2013, letter to the payments industry (“An Open Letter to the Electronic Payments Industry from Bob Carr”), the chairman and CEO of Heartland Payment Systems provides a compelling historical overview of the challenges faced by our industry some three decades ago. As detailed in his letter, …

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 …

  PayPal Inc., the financial services arm of marketplace eBay Inc., continues to work on expanding PayPal acceptance beyond e-commerce, and its decision last month to buy Braintree Payment Solutions LLC for $800 million is one part of that effort, eBay executives said Wednesday. EBay has been expanding the number …

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 …

  Ideally, merchants that use payment card acceptance services would know which merchant acquirers they work with. But in a recent report from research firm Aite Group LLC, the most common response when merchants were asked to name their acquirers was “Don’t know.” Of the 491 U.S. merchants surveyed for …

  Recurring revenue from transaction-processing fees has been a staple of independent sales organizations and acquirers for decades. But amid a host of new competitors, the payment-processing industry finds itself wondering what its next steps may be. ISOs are squeezed on one side by large players, like First Data Corp. …

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 …

By Jim Daly An injunction that puts New York State’s ban on merchants’ credit card surcharges on hold could be a prelude to a bigger legal assault on states’ surcharge restrictions. If pro-surcharging merchants prevail, their actions could add some oomph to a provision in the pending settlement of unrelated …

By Kevin Woodward The appointment on Tuesday of Jeffrey S. Sloan as the new chief executive of payment processor Global Payments Inc., succeeding long-time chief executive Paul Garcia, surprised hardly anyone. Sloan, who joined Global Payments as president in 2010, has a history with the company. Garcia, who was named …