Acquiring

New Visa Inc. chief executive Charles W. Scharf used his first earnings conference call with analysts Wednesday to offer an olive branch to U.S. merchants. Scharf’s comments came on the heels of an earnings and operational report for fiscal 2013’s first quarter that show strong U.S. Visa credit card growth …

First Data Corp. late on Monday named Ed Labry, president of the big processor’s North American unit, as interim chief executive officer to  replace current chief executive Jonathan J. Judge, who is retiring early for health reasons. The announcement came less than a day before First Data announced mixed fourth-quarter …

The surcharging provisions of the credit card interchange settlement announced last July will take effect on Sunday, but observers expect few merchants will take advantage of their new-found freedom to add a surcharge to Visa and MasterCard credit card sales. “I know of nobody” who plans to surcharge, says Mitch …

A sweeping review by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City of the Durbin Amendment’s effects warns that competition could be harmed if more payment card networks adopt fixed-pricing plans as they compete for merchant business in the newly regulated debit card environment. The new report is the first of …

A buoyant John Donahoe, chief executive of eBay Inc., said on Wednesday that PayPal Inc.’s launch on the Discover Network is “on track” to begin toward the end of the second quarter. A key part of eBay unit PayPal’s strategy to bring its payment service to the physical point of …

Citing health reasons, First Data Corp. chief executive Jonathan J. Judge on Friday announced plans to retire. The unexpected retirement casts a cloud of uncertainty over the nation’s largest payment processor as it competes in a fast-changing payments industry and, down the road, prepares for a possible IPO or sale …

In sharp contrast to only a year ago, independent sales organizations and other merchant acquirers now rank revenue generation as their number-one goal for programs they offer to help merchants comply with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI), according to a survey set to be released on Thursday. The …

While many brick-and-mortar retailers were disappointed with sales for the 2012 holiday season, online merchants posted respectable gains in the mid-teens, according to new reports. Internet usage tracker comScore Inc. reported on Thursday that e-commerce volume hit $42.3 billion in the November-December holiday shopping season, up 13.8% over $37.2 billion …

Leading U.S.-based point-of-sale terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc.’s retreat from its role as merchant acquirer for its Sail mobile-payments platform for micro-merchants last week after only seven months is triggering intense debate among independent sales organizations and payments-industry veterans. The crux of the debate concerns whether processing for tiny merchants …

Seven months after VeriFone Systems Inc. launched Sail, its mobile-payments platform for micro-merchants, the San Jose-based point-of-sale terminal maker and payments software provider is stepping back from its role as an acquirer for Sail merchants and will instead revert to its traditional role of solutions provider. The announcement from chief …