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Merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc. cleared away probably the single biggest remaining matter from the huge data breach it disclosed a year ago by announcing a $60 million settlement with Visa Inc. on Friday. The settlement will cover losses Visa credit and debit card issuers incurred in the wake …
Read More »Discover Continues Its Zip Trial But Stays Mum About Any Rollout
A Discover Financial Services employee test of contactless payment stickers for mobile devices that started in April 2009 will continue, according to a Discover executive. But Discover is being coy about if and when it or its card-issuing partners will roll out Discover's Zip contactless brand on a wide scale. …
Read More »VeriFone Battles Heartland Publicly While the Two Talk in Private
Payment card terminal maker VeriFone Holdings Inc. on Monday issued a press release trumpeting its victory in a courtroom skirmish with merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc. What VeriFone didn't mention, however, was that it is in settlement talks with Heartland that could end their multifront legal war. That war, …
Read More »Will Consumers’ Shift Away from Credit Cards Outlast the Recession?
Consumers have cut back their usage of credit cards in the past year, often on their own volition but also because suddenly risk-averse credit card issuers have closed millions of credit card accounts or reduced credit lines in their attempts to strengthen recession-racked balance sheets. Now the emerging question is …
Read More »VeriFone Sees Promise in Mobile Apps And Taxi Transactions
VeriFone Holdings Inc. swung to a welcome $3.69 million profit in its fourth fiscal 2009 quarter and sees evidence of recovery in its global markets, but the leading U.S. point-of-sale terminal provider isn't expecting a rebound in its North American business for a while. “It's still kind of a shaky …
Read More »VeriFone Brings a Terminal Maker’s Savvy to Mobile Payments
With a number of processors and software houses having introduced applications over the past year to let merchants process cards on smart phones, many observers wondered how long it would be before the established point-of-sale terminal vendors entered this market. On Tuesday morning, the answer came with VeriFone Holdings Inc.'s …
Read More »C-Stores Prepare New Anti-Interchange Petition Drive
Retailers fighting what they say are high payment-card acceptance costs are not letting the heated debates about health care or President Obama's planned troop surge in Afghanistan push interchange off the political stage. The NACS?The Association for Convenience and Petroleum Retailing, next week will launch what it calls Phase 2 …
Read More »Square Gets Points for Cleverness, But Leaves Questions Unanswered
If hype augurs success, the new Square payments application for mobile merchants is off to a promising start. The product, announced this week by a San Francisco startup called Square Inc., is attracting attention not just in the payments business but in the wider business community. That's because Square's founder …
Read More »With Payments a Big Part of Health-Care Costs, Automation Efforts Arise
Low-hanging fruit it's not, but health care still remains one of the biggest untapped markets for electronic payments. A new report from Celent LLC estimates that $11 billion could be saved by automating just part of the health-care payments process. And a new industry group is forming to marshal the …
Read More »A Proxy Fight Breaks Out at USA Technologies
USA Technologies Inc., the provider of contactless card readers and wireless transaction-processing services for vending machines, laundries and other venues, has become the latest payments-industry tech company whose management finds itself embroiled in a fight with shareholders angry about losses and slumping stock prices. Malvern, Pa.-based USA Technologies sent a …
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