Competitive Strategies

Vantiv Inc.’s deal to acquire Mercury Payment Systems LLC was noteworthy for its size—the deal carried a $1.65 billion price tag—but it was also exemplary of a key industry transformation from distribution-centric to product-centric acquiring. For decades, the merchant-acquiring industry has revolved around selling the services of barely differentiated payment …

Payment processor Vantiv Inc. announced late Monday that it has struck a definitive agreement with the majority owner of tech-oriented independent sales organization Mercury Payment Systems LLC to buy Mercury for $1.65 billion in a debt-funded transaction. Durango, Colo.-based Mercury is suspending plans it disclosed in late March for an …

Citing little enthusiasm by either consumers or merchants for contactless card payments, JPMorgan Chase & Co. has quietly begun informing cardholders that it is discontinuing its blink contactless program. While at first glance blink’s demise seems like a setback for chip-based card payments in the United States, it is unlikely …

A new type of gift card is set to debut this summer that will be backed not by cash but by shares of stock. The virtual card will come from a startup called Stockpile Inc., which has created a waiting list for interested potential accountholders and is planning to market …

Despite the impending loss of consumer payment cards from mega-bank JPMorgan Chase & Co., MasterCard Inc. is winning new business from U.S. card issuers, its top executives said Thursday at the No. 2 payment card network’s first-quarter earnings call. U.S. credit card purchase volume grew 8.1% year-over-year to $138 billion …

  Shopify Inc. can eliminate learning new languages from its list of objectives. The online-commerce company announced this week it was adding 2Checkout’s payment technology, which processes payments in 26 currencies in 196 countries, to its POS software. The move does not displace the back-end payment-processing compact between Shopify and …

Independent sales organizations and acquirers considering mobile ticketing as a value-add service to sell to merchants have a new option. n The service works like this. Merchants use a Web portal to set up their events, including details about the name, Web site, times, available tickets, and pricing. Chirrpy also …

In an effort to become easier for merchant acquirers, merchants, and card issuers to deal with, Visa Inc. late this year will eliminate almost 50% of its operating rules, which currently total more than 1,500 pages, chief executive Charles W. Scharf said Thursday. Scharf made that revelation at Visa’s second-quarter …

  An industry as intrinsic to commerce as electronic payments is unlikely to make wholesale moves to new technologies like mobile payments. That applies to consumers, too, who appear to be moderating their use of mobile payments. Data from the IDC Financial Insights 2014 Consumer Payments Survey reveal that consumer …

American Express Co. deepened its prepaid card relationship with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. with Monday’s announcement that its Serve card will be sold in 4,100 U.S. Walmart-branded stores. The Walmart stores also will become part of Serve’s cash-reload network, boosting its location count to 19,500. Serve’s thus will become the biggest …