Sunday , December 22, 2024

News

March, 2014

  • 31 March

    Mercury Payment Systems Files Registration Statement for Possible IPO

    The merchant-acquiring industry might soon get another publicly traded company should independent sales organization Mercury Payment Systems Inc. follow through on plans to sell a minority stake in the company. n Mercury Payment Systems Inc.’s operating subsidiary, Mercury Payment Systems LLC, currently is 62% owned by an affiliate of private-equity …

  • 31 March

    Square Market Accepts Bitcoin As Good News/Bad News Pattern Continues for Currency

    The up-and-down course Bitcoin has followed in recent months continued on Monday as Square Inc. announced it has started accepting the digital currency on Square Market, the online marketplace it unveiled last June. The news lent some legitimacy to Bitcoin just as the currency was reeling from an Internal Revenue …

  • 27 March

    Eye on Bitcoin: It’s Not a Currency, the IRS Says; Jumio Launches Security Network

    By Linda Punch Those looking for the U.S. Internal Revenue Service to give Bitcoin legitimacy as a currency when the agency issued its guidance earlier this week were sorely disappointed. The IRS said the digital cash will be taxed like property, not currency. But the quest for legitimacy may be …

  • 27 March

    New Law Enforcement Tactic Could Snare ISOs and Acquirers in Quest To Catch Bad Merchants

      A historical shift in how some federal financial law-enforcement agencies view the payments industry is under way, and it’s not one that bodes well for the industry, Jason Oxman, chief executive of the Electronic Transactions Association, told attendees at the Southeast Acquirers Association conference this week in Atlanta. Dubbed …

  • 27 March

    It’s Wal-Mart vs. Visa in Yet Another Payment Card Interchange Battle Royal

    They’ve met in court before, and it looks like they’re going to meet again: Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the No. 1 retailer, against Visa Inc., the No. 1 payment card network. As usual, the subject is interchange and payment card acceptance rules. Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart is suing Visa for alleged violations …

  • 26 March

    Merchant Warehouse’s Opticard Purchase Intended To Enhance Small Business Products

      Merchant Warehouse Inc. has bought gift and loyalty provider Opticard and has plans to offer its services as part of bundled transaction services to merchants. Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Opticard, which will continue to operate independently, sells gift and loyalty card services to small businesses. Merchants can use Opticard programs to …

  • 26 March

    Target Clarifies Number of Consumers Affected by Breach, Claims Data Security Improving

    Target Corp. told a U.S. Senate committee Wednesday that the overlap in the number of consumers affected by the two-headed monster of its data breach may be 12 million or more. The nation’s No. 2 general retailer also said it is improving its data security in the wake of the …

  • 26 March

    Pulse Deal Gives Visa’s Common AID Nearly Universal Enablement for Chip Debit Transactions

    Discover Financial Service’s Pulse subsidiary last week became the latest debit network to license Visa Inc.’s so-called common application identifier (AID) on soon-to-be-issued Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip debit cards. This latest agreement means Visa’s common AID will be enabled on cards that account for nearly 90% of U.S. PIN-debit transactions. The …

  • 25 March

    Banks Sue Trustwave, Target’s PCI Services Provider Before the Retailer’s Data Breach

    Trustwave Holdings Inc., the leading provider of Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) services to merchants, on Monday became the target of a lawsuit arising from the massive data breach at Target Corp. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago by two banks, claims negligence on the part …

  • 24 March

    Sen. Durbin Decries Appellate Court’s ‘Giveaway’ to Banks; Merchants Mull Their Next Steps

    An appellate court’s Friday decision reinstating the Federal Reserve Board’s controversial interpretation of the Dodd-Frank Act’s Durbin Amendment with its debit card interchange cap and transaction-routing requirements continues to draw fire, but whether the merchants and retail groups that brought the appeal and lost will trudge on in court remains …

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