Acquiring

The U.S. Department of Justice filed court documents Tuesday that move toward completion its challenge of Visa and MasterCard network rules limiting merchants’ ability to steer customer payments toward their preferred forms. Tuesday’s action is largely procedural as Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. announced settlements when the DoJ and seven …

  n n n n Inner Fence refers applicants to its ISO partner, Dublin, Ohio-based Merchant Focus Inc., for merchant accounts. The service uses the Authorize.net gateway for access to the payment networks. Merchants pay a $25 monthly fee, plus 24 cents and 1.74% to 3.79% of the sale, depending …

  n n n The source of such fears is a fast-changing landscape in which all the payment card networks are looking for new revenues and markets. “Some of my clients are freaking out, without naming names,” says Adil Moussa, an analyst at Boston-based Aite. Card networks are already direct …

  Bullish on the prospects of electronic wallets residing on smart phones equipped with near field communication (NFC) chips, leading point-of-sale terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc. says that topline revenues from software, services, and equipment for NFC wallets could increase in the United States between $100 to $150 million, and …

Cash: the merchant’s friend or foe? Two of the nation’s largest merchants on Thursday expressed surprisingly favorable views about the ancient payment method while an executive with the Chicago Transit Authority, the nation’s second-largest public-transportation system, wished it would go away as soon as possible. The comments came during the …

  After taking a nasty hit in the recession, credit cards are back on their feet, though somewhat wobbly. Figures from First Data Corp., the largest U.S merchant processor, show that credit card usage is sustaining growth after returning to positive territory in early 2010. Data from the bank card …

The U.S. Department of Justice filed suit Thursday to stop VeriFone Systems Inc. from buying Hypercom Corp., saying the proposed $485 million stock deal “would substantially reduce competition in the U.S. point-of-sale terminal market.” The DoJ said the current plan to sell most of Hypercom’s U.S. assets to the North …

The telecommunications companies that own the Isis mobile-payments joint venture have apparently given up on the idea of creating their own merchant network and instead are redirecting their efforts on a mobile wallet, according to a published report. If confirmed, the Isis move means that the existing payment card networks …

Intuit Inc. on Monday dropped flat transaction fees for its GoPayment mobile-payments service just over two months after Square Inc. did the same thing, an indication that a price war could be breaking out between two of the major companies competing for brand-new and small businesses that use smart phones …

Nearly 90% of all bank fees merchants pay goes toward cash management and card processing, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Association for Financial Professionals, a trade group for corporate financial officers. Meanwhile, some 79% of retailers expect recent legislative changes, including the Durbin Amendment, not only …