Transaction Processing

• U.S. senators from Colorado, Washington, and Oregon, three states where recreational marijuana use is legal, asked the various federal bank and credit-union regulatory agencies to develop joint guidance for how financial institutions could serve legal cannabis businesses; marijuana use remains illegal under federal law, meaning that many marijuana merchants …

• Merchant acquirer Global Payments Inc. reported net income of $69.1 million for fiscal 2016’s third quarter ended Feb. 29, up 10.4% from $62.6 million a year earlier. Revenues came in at $679.9 million, up 2.2%. Global Payments expects to complete its acquisition of Heartland Payment Systems Inc. this month. …

With financial institutions, merchants, and software application developers all looking for better online security than that afforded by the traditional, static user name and password, the Fast IDentity Online (FIDO) Alliance’s brand of authentication products is starting to get traction. The Mountain View, Calif.-based industry consortium reported Monday that 150 …

•  PayPal Holdings Inc. will not follow through on plans announced two weeks ago to expand in Charlotte, N.C., and add 400 jobs because of North Carolina’s recently enacted House Bill 2, which PayPal says “perpetuates discrimination and it violates the values and principles that are at the core of …

E-retailing giant Amazon.com Inc. unveiled an e-commerce developer program Monday designed to spread Amazon’s payments service across more shopping sites. Dubbed the Amazon Payments Partner Program, the invitation-only program targets e-commerce developers and platform providers to help them add a pay or Amazon log-in button to their checkout pages. Already, …

• VeriFone Systems Inc. introduced Verifone Carbon, a black, portable point-of-sale system for café owners, quick-service restaurants, and stores that features a tablet screen for the merchant and a smaller screen for the customer, and a stand with a built-in printer. The Intel-powered device includes VeriFone’s cloud-based Commerce Platform that …

A new report about data breaches from a law firm that analyzed compromises affecting more than 300 of its clients in 2015 has some unique perspectives that supplement findings from data-security technology firms such as Mandiant and Trustwave or telecommunications giant Verizon, all of which have produced widely read summaries …

Contrary to what many may suspect, price is not the top reason retailers switch from one point-of-sale provider to another, according to a study from Capterra Inc., a business-software review site. In a survey of more than 400 merchants, 34% cited a POS system’s lack of necessary features as the …

For years, the wave of fraud receded like an outgoing tide for companies that accepted electronic payments from consumers and other businesses. But last year, a tidal wave crashed on shore. Fully 73% of companies reported they had suffered actual or attempted payments fraud in 2015, up 11 percentage points …

• The Federal Reserve picked consulting firm McKinsey & Co. to support its Faster Payments Task Force efforts this year by assessing solution proposals from various payments providers. • Merchant processor Square Inc. announced its “Build With Square,” a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that integrates point-of-sale and-online payments capabilities with …