Acquiring

The merchant-acquiring industry can expect more market consolidation and more attention to security, and it also will have to adjust to the secular shift away from credit and toward debit, according to a new assessment of market trends from Mercator Advisory Group Inc. Portfolio sales and acquisitions of smaller processors …

An application officially announced this week extends to virtually any cell phone the capability of accepting credit cards, a function that up to now mobile merchants have found mostly restricted to so-called smart phones like the iPhone or BlackBerry. The wCharge Credit Card Terminal, quietly introduced early this year by …

The end-to-end encryption train picked up steam on Tuesday when big merchant acquirer RBS WorldPay Inc. said it would use point-of-sale terminal developer VeriFone Holdings Inc.'s VeriShield Protect technology. The announcement is significant because RBS WorldPay is the first acquirer to publicly disclose it is using the system VeriFone unveiled …

Despite widespread efforts to educate small merchants about the Payment Card Industry data-security standards (PCI DSS), a large majority still don't understand fully the complex requirements, according to a study released today by the National Retail Federation, ControlScan and the PCI Knowledge Base. The survey of 220 so-called Level 4 …

As PayPal Inc. recovers from a major?and apparently unprecedented?system outage on Monday, questions are starting to emerge about the actual impact on online merchants and about the e-commerce processor's preparedness for such emergencies. PayPal reported late in the day that its network was functioning normally again after the failure of …

A record decline in same-store sales and a $19.4 million charge for costs related to its data breach put big merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc. into the red during the second quarter. But Heartland executives on Tuesday pointed to bright spots, and also said their post-breach efforts to develop …

As the recession continues to batter merchants of all sizes, small and medium-size retailers are getting hit especially hard, and as a result so are the acquirers that process their card transactions. Indeed, in a development apparently never seen before, same-store sales on Visa and MasterCard for these Main Street …

MasterCard Inc.'s announcement on Monday that The Home Depot Inc. would accept the MasterCard PayPass contactless card at 1,974 U.S. locations, along with last week's news that sporting-goods chain The Sports Authority also would take PayPass, indicate that the card network is looking beyond the original base of cash-oriented merchants …

The concept of using so-called smart phones as mobile credit card terminals started getting headlines less than a year ago, and the experience of one independent sales organization that has developed software applications for the mobile devices shows just how rapidly handsets like iPhones and BlackBerrys are taking root in …

Merchants that are good prospects for accepting remote deposit capture services have different needs from many credit and debit card-accepting merchants, but independent sales organizations that do their remote capture homework will be rewarded. That was the word on Wednesday from several vendors speaking at the MidWest Acquirers Association 7th …