• Merchant acquirer Square Inc. announced a promotion that waives processing costs for small businesses on more than $12,000 in Apple Pay charge volume. It will give free processing on Apple Pay transactions for small-business customers that enroll this year in a promotion that includes purchase of Square’s contactless and EMV chip card reader …

Vending-payments specialist USA Technologies Inc. is integrating its MORE. loyalty platform into Apple Pay, the company announced Thursday. The deal is designed to induce more consumers to use Apple Pay at almost 300,000 vending machines that use USAT’s contactless payment technology and to encourage them to use the MORE. program. …

Developing a point-of-sale app to operate on a tablet is but one ingredient necessary for catering to the payment-processing needs of hospitality merchants. Hospitality merchants have long been a favored customer base for many acquirers and independent sales organizations. For example, Heartland Payment Systems, now part of Global Payments Inc., …

• The U.S. Supreme Court gave the green light to class-action lawsuits by ATM operators and consumers accusing Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc. and several U.S. banks of conspiring to inflate the prices of ATM access fees in violation of antitrust law, Reuters reported. The justices dismissed two related cases they earlier had …

EMV after effects dominate our list of headaches this year. Still, from regulation to faster payments to interchange uncertainty, there are plenty of other issues to contend with. In the 10 years we have compiled our annual list of pressing issues facing the payments industry, no single theme has dominated …

With an abundance of smart-terminal options available, the question is, when will EMV-weary merchants be ready to deploy this newfangled technology? Emerging from the haze surrounding U.S. EMV merchant adoption, vendor strategies are taking shape aimed at supplanting traditional payment terminals with flashy platforms that promise access to rich ecosystems …

• Processor Fiserv Inc. said ATM services provider FCTI Inc., a U.S. affiliate of convenience-store giant 7-Eleven Inc.’s Japan-based parent company, picked it to provide transaction processing for 7-Eleven’s nearly 8,000 U.S. ATMs when FCTI takes over the portfolio next July from Cardtronics plc. • Payment technology provider ACI Worldwide …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Tech companies like Square Inc. made their reputations by rolling out simple card readers that linked to Apple Inc.’s

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews Mobile payments continue to garner merchant interest as more retailers are accepting mobile wallets, research shows. Meanwhile, drug-store chain Walgreens is making its loyalty program available to users of Android Pay. Thirty-four percent of small businesses accept mobile payments like Apple Pay and Android Pay, finds the …

• Merchant processor Square Inc. settled a lawsuit filed by a Washington University professor, Robert E. Morley, who said he invented Square’s card reader for smart phones. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but Square set aside $50 million in the first quarter to cover legal expenses from the …