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Discover Financial Services on Tuesday named six prominent merchant acquirers among 50 committed to helping the network bring acceptance of leading online payment system PayPal to more than 2 million physical merchant locations by year’s end. But a notable missing link is No. 1 merchant processor First Data Corp., …
Read More »First Data Picks a Top Chase Executive As Its New CEO
Leading payment processor First Data Corp. reached outside the company over the weekend to tap Frank Bisignano, a veteran operations executive with experience at some of the nation’s largest banks, as its new chief executive officer. Bisignano, most recently co-chief operating officer at JPMorgan Chase & Co., replaces Jonathan …
Read More »PayPal Hikes Offline Merchant Count by 11% with First-Quarter Jump
Nearly 20,000 U.S. merchant locations now accept PayPal, up from 18,000 three months ago, according to data released on Wednesday in tandem with eBay Inc.’s quarterly earnings report. San Jose, Calif.-based PayPal Inc. is a unit of eBay. The roughly 11% jump in merchant acceptance for PayPal since eBay’s …
Read More »Judge Tells Retailer Groups To Settle Their Online Feud Arising From Interchange Settlement
In one of the stranger twists arising from the controversial settlement to credit card interchange litigation, the federal judge overseeing the massive case on Thursday gave lawyers for two feuding merchant groups a week to propose changes to a Web site that urges merchants to opt out of the …
Read More »Processor Global Payments Prepares To Close the Book on Its Data Breach
With little fanfare, Global Payments Inc. last week disclosed that the payment card networks had returned it their lists of processors compliant with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) following remediation efforts the merchant processor began after the data breach it disclosed a year ago. Atlanta-based Global Payments also …
Read More »PayPal Eyes a Growing Market for Cash Advances to Credit-Starved Internet Merchants
Merchant cash advances for online retailers suddenly are coming into vogue with the entry of PayPal Inc. into the market. PayPal recently disclosed that it plans to test in its home country a cash-advance program similar to one it has tested in the United Kingdom. Finance companies and merchant …
Read More »Today’s Data-Security Technology Just Doesn’t Cut It, Experts Tell E-Commerce Execs
Like metastatic cancer, the cyberattacks originating from ordinary hackers all the way up to national governments seem to be getting worse by the day, according to security experts who spoke Wednesday to a conference of e-commerce executives. Case in point: last week, citizens of South Korea couldn’t use banks …
Read More »NEBA Sale Will Close the Book on the Regional Bank Card Processing Associations
The pending acquisition of the processing business of NEBA (formerly the New England Bankcard Association), a Wakefield, Mass.-based bank card issuing and merchant-acquiring association, by processor Primax will mark the end of an era. Founded in 1969, NEBA is the last of the 12 original regional processing associations for …
Read More »MasterCard’s Wallet Fee: A Tool of Oppression, or One To Level the Acquiring Playing Field?
Is MasterCard Inc.’s coming digital-wallet fee for online-payments providers such as PayPal Inc. a fair charge for systems that rely on the bank card networks to move their transactions, or a way for the established card networks to squeeze upstarts? That’s the gist of the debate that’s swept across the …
Read More »Mobile-Payments Startup LevelUp Expands Its Footprint With a New Heartland Partnership
LevelUp, the mobile-payments unit of Boston-based SCVNGR Inc., announced a partnership with the big merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc. on Thursday that will dramatically expand its national reach with merchants and make its white-label mobile app more affordable to merchants wanting to increase their loyalty marketing. The agreement gives …
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