Acquiring

Sales of high-tech products such as wireless and Internet Protocol payment terminals helped VeriFone Holdings Inc. post a 21% revenue gain in its first fiscal 2006 quarter, but merchants with limited needs also helped out. In an analysts' conference call late Thursday afternoon, chairman and chief executive Douglas G. Bergeron …

A proposal for a new payment application that would allow merchants to convert bundles of consumer checks to electronic transactions in a central location has received largely favorable comment from banks, merchants, and other industry participants. NACHA, the Herndon, Va.-based rules-setting organization for the automated clearing house, is reviewing written …

The battle over interchange, which has already spawned some 47 antitrust suits against the bank card networks and major banks, reached the U.S. Congress today as advocates for both retailers and banks traded sometimes barbed arguments before a panel holding a one-day hearing to look into the networks' pricing mechanism. …

Heartland Payment Systems Inc., a publicly held acquiring processor based in Princeton, N.J., announced today it has acquired Debitek, a provider of closed-loop stored-value systems based in Chattanooga, Tenn., from terminal maker Ingenico Corp. Terms of the transaction, which was structured as a stock purchase, were not disclosed. The deal …

In building out a network of point-of-sale readers to accept their contactless cards and tokens, banks and their card associations could be creating an infrastructure that will also support payments based on new mobile-payment technologies like Motorola Corp.'s M-Wallet software that could bypass the lucrative credit card interchange system, one …

Merchants upset about interchange pricing may or may not ultimately prevail in their pending litigation against the bank card networks, but any outcome is likely to be years away. For now, there are practical steps retailers and service providers can take to cut acceptance costs, an executive with a major …

Merchant litigation against bank card interchange may end up benefiting bank card network competitors like American Express Co. more than retailers, a Wall Street analyst who has followed the interchange controversy cautioned this week. If successful in forcing Visa USA and MasterCard International and their members to cut interchange rates, …

With the melding of Chase Merchant Services and Paymentech L.P. going smoothly as the new Chase Paymentech Solutions LLC, boss Michael P. Duffy foresees his giant merchant-acquiring firm doing more than $600 billion in charge volume this year. In an interview for a story to appear in Digital Transactions' March …

Despite some poor fourth-quarter financials, shares of First Data Corp. rose nearly 7% this morning after the big transaction processor announced plans to spin off its fast-growing and biggest subsidiary, Western Union, to First Data shareholders. Denver-based First Data also ended speculation that it might sell its lackluster Card Issuing …

CyberSource Corp.'s acquiring business now accounts for fully a quarter of revenue for the Mountain View, Calif.-based provider of gateway and fraud-management services for e-commerce merchants, the company announced today. That represents significant growth from a year ago, when the fledgling acquiring business, in which the company offers and supports …