Pricing

Surcharges and discounts for cash aren’t brand-new pricing tactics, but interest in them by independent sales organizations is rising because of falling legal barriers and the potential profits. Repeated sessions about the topic were packed Thursday at the Western States Acquirers Association annual conference in Scottsdale, Ariz. The presenter was Ryan …

Data breaches bring a slew of bad consequences for the victim, not the least of which are the costs of lost business, remediation, and, possibly, litigation. But for publicly held entities, there’s an additional risk: a lasting hit to the share price. For 24 companies whose shares are traded on …

For all the gyrations Bitcoin and its enthusiasts have experienced over the past 12 months, the digital currency has managed to trace a relatively calm track lately. It remains, however, an acquired taste for users, and while some independent sales organizations have begun efforts in recent weeks to sell it …

Boosted by profits that mostly exceeded analysts’ expectations, payments companies in August once again beat the major stock indexes even though the markets themselves performed well, according to a new report from Barrington Research Associates Inc. Chicago-based Barrington said Wednesday that 27 publicly traded electronic-transaction processors it tracks posted a …

The panelists were not subtle in assessing the future of digital currencies and the decentralized blockchain technology behind them. “Cryptocurrencies and blockchain will take over the world, it will be a bigger impact on the world than the Internet,” said investment banker Dennis O’Neill, chief executive of Chicago-based O’Neill Capital …

The business of getting merchants to accept cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin has started to attract independent sales organizations and payments-tech firms alike, and now Square Inc. has jumped in with a proposed service that some experts say could help the payments-technology powerhouse grab a share of online volume. The U.S. Patent …

Payment-industry incumbents, particularly the global credit card networks and their allied banks and processors, can’t rest on their laurels lest fast-growing mobile and non-card payment systems in much of the world leave them in the dust. That was the conclusion of payments researchers Friday who spoke at the Mobile Payments …

Interchange on debit card transactions has changed relatively little in the nearly seven years since the Durbin Amendment to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act took effect, but a Federal Reserve report notes one small but interesting recent change. The average interchange fee in 2017 for dual-message transactions on debit cards regulated …

The escalating U.S.-China trade war is generating calls for a truce from the payments industry. Most recently, the ATM Industry Association announced its opposition to planned U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods, calling them a “threat to business.” ATMIA members are expected to testify at a tariff hearing next week in …

The boycott of Visa credit cards by The Kroger Co.’s Foods Co chain in central and northern California began Tuesday as planned, but the parent company still won’t say whether the boycott will be expanded to its many other units. Citing what it calls high costs to accept Visa credit …