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Stressing such factors as the rapid growth of mobile commerce and the advantages of streamlined integration, representatives from Discover Financial Services, Mercury Payment Systems LLC, and PayPal Inc. on Tuesday urged a roomful of point-of-sale technology resellers to begin moving quickly on selling mobile payments to retail clients. “I would …
Read More »Continuing a Consolidation Trend, Four Southern ACH Associations Will Merge Jan. 1
Four regional automated clearing house associations in the South will merge Jan. 1 under the name of PaymentsFirst Inc. The merger may be the biggest one yet among regional ACH associations in terms of participants and furthers the long-standing trend of smaller, mostly state-based ACH organizations pooling their resources as …
Read More »Merchant Warehouse Strikes Deal to Integrate PayPal into Its Genius Point-of-sale Platform
Merchant acquirer and payment-technology developer Merchant Warehouse is adding PayPal acceptance to its Genius point-of-sale platform, the Boston-based company announced Monday. Merchant Warehouse’s Genius system enables merchants to accept payments and to manage services like loyalty, mobile commerce, gift, and rewards programs. PayPal is activated remotely, requiring no action by merchants. …
Read More »MasterPass Now in 10 Markets Globally, Four More to Come, MasterCard CEO Tells Analysts
Top executives at MasterCard Inc. on Thursday trumpeted the card network’s gains with MasterPass, its digital wallet, and downplayed the impact of JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s ongoing conversion to Visa Inc. Introduced two years ago, MasterPass is now operating in 10 countries with “tens of thousands” of merchants and will …
Read More »Having Built Its Own Processing Platform, TransFirst Prepares for a Partial IPO
The big merchant acquirer TransFirst Inc. gave notice Wednesday that it is planning a partial initial public offering. Hauppauge, N.Y.-based TransFirst filed a registration statement, or S-1, with the Securities and Exchange Commission announcing its IPO plans and putting a tentative value of $100 million on the deal. The filing says …
Read More »Big Man on Campus: Heartland Pays $375 Million for Higher-Education Payments Company TouchNet
Heartland Payment Systems Inc. is paying $375 million to expand its position as a higher education payments provider. The Princeton, N.J.-based processor announced today it bought Lenexa, Kansas-based TouchNet Information Systems Inc. Heartland says this is its highest-priced acquisition to date. TouchNet provides a variety of payment services to …
Read More »Amazon Dongle Unconfirmed, But E-Commerce Giant Could Rely on Powerful Assets
Amazon.com Inc. on Monday refused to comment on a report that the big online retailer is preparing to launch a mobile card reader to compete with Square Inc., PayPal Inc., and dozens of other vendors. “We can’t comment on rumors and speculation,” an Amazon.com spokesperson told Digital Transactions News by …
Read More »Eye on Mobile: Zing’s Register Stresses Integrations; Amazon Blesses PayPal for Fire
The arms race in the tablet-based point-of-sale market heated up on Friday with Zing’s launch of its Register application. Built for Apple Inc.’s iPad, the software-as-a-service product includes integrations with e-commerce platform Bigcommerce and email-marketing provider MailChimp on top of the expected payment-processing services. Further integrations with Intuit Inc.’s QuickBooks …
Read More »Tokenization Plays the Central Role in Visa’s New Cloud Payment Suite
Visa Inc. moved on Thursday to commercialize mobile payments using cloud-based near-field communication technology with its release of Visa Cloud Payment Solutions. A related development, the announcement of the upcoming debut of a tokenization service, is aimed at locking down cloud-based NFC and other digital payments. The new services include …
Read More »Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan’s Deal for First American Underscores Profitability of Merchant Processing
An investment consortium led by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan is buying First American Payment Systems L.P., a Fort Worth, Texas-based payment processor and independent sales organization, in a deal that observers say highlights the profitability of merchant processing, despite ongoing margin pressure. First American says the Toronto-based pension …
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