Acquiring

Giving the bank card networks a taste of the medicine they’re getting in the U.S., Canada’s Competition Bureau on Wednesday took action against Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. rules against surcharging and honor-all-cards requirements intended to prevent discrimination by Canadian merchants against credit cardholders. “Visa and MasterCard’s anti-competitive behavior hurts …

Financial-industry clients of Goldman Sachs & Co. are bracing for cuts of 40% to 60% in signature debit card interchange rates when the Federal Reserve Board releases its draft regulations for the controversial fee, possibly as soon as Thursday. Many of the investment-banking firm’s clients also expect the Fed to …

Ominous or joyous interchange news, depending on your perspective, just rolled in from Europe. The European Commission, the antitrust authority in European Union nations, on Dec. 8 accepted Visa Europe’s proposal to reduce debit card interchange by up to 60% in nine countries. The EC’s action, while having no legal …

Already big inside the convenience stores at thousands of gas stations, point-of-sale terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc. is making headway at gas pumps. VeriFone on Thursday reported that petroleum-industry revenues grew 58% in its fourth fiscal 2010 quarter ended Oct. 31 over the year-earlier period. The strong petroleum results helped …

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have ignited a promising start to the 2011 holiday spending season that appears to signal a revival in consumer spirits following a deep recession and wobbly recovery, according to a number of statistical indicators that have been released this week. Transactions on Monday at some …

Banks that have both issuing and merchant-acquiring operations might generate more charge volume and make more money if they started taking advantage of new opportunities presented by online group-couponing companies, merchant-funded rewards programs, and mobile-phone-based marketers to help their merchant clients increase sales, Aite Group LLC says in a new …

Contactless debit cards will make their formal debut in Canada next year with the launch of Interac Flash from Acxsys Corp.’s Interac Association, Canada’s national debit network. Interac’s first two Flash issuers are Scotiabank and RBC Royal Bank, which will roll out their first contactless cards next summer. The first …

Visa Inc. and a prominent law firm serving financial-industry clients want the Federal Reserve Board to regulate debit card interchange by setting an “average effective interchange rate” and then letting the payment card networks set their own rates as long as the average interchange rate on transactions subject to regulation …

Six weeks ago, point-of-sale terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc. made an unsolicited, $283 million cash bid for smaller U.S. rival Hypercom Corp., an offer Hypercom immediately rejected as too low and described as “opportunistic and intended to disrupt our business.” Hypercom went so far as to adopt a so-called poison …

In a move the payments industry had expected since early August, the nation’s largest wireless carriers on Tuesday announced they had formed a joint venture to run a point-of-sale mobile-payments network. The new company, known as Isis, will be headed by Michael Abbott, formerly an executive with GE Capital’s proprietary …