n Square Inc. kept up the pressure on the traditional merchant-acquiring industry on Monday by introducing a souped-up version of its iPad app for brick-and-mortar merchants called Square Register with enhanced business-management functions. Meanwhile, the Isis mobile-payments venture announced it has struck deals with the major U.S. point-of-sale terminal makers …

n n Competition from Square? No problem, according to VeriFone Systems Inc. chief executive Douglas G. Bergeron. n “We’ve had competitors for 30 years,” Bergeron said in response to an analyst’s inquiry about how he sees the competitive risk to VeriFone, the leading U.S.-based point-of-sale terminal maker, from Square Inc., …

The question posed in our headline this month is one we used to lead off our cover story last October, “Merchants Zero in on Payments.” At the time, merchants were fresh off a signal victory over the banks and the networks in a bruising Congressional battle over debit card interchange, …

Some of the nation’s biggest merchants have been adamant for months that they prefer EMV payments with PINs, not signatures, and on Thursday they were joined in that sentiment by a panel of representatives from some of the country’s largest processors. In the face of tepid support, at best, for …

Mocapay Inc., one of the earliest startups in the mobile-payments space, finally is poised to go national with new partners, a different pricing model, and a broadened set of technological options that its president says makes payments by smart phone easier for merchants and consumers. Mocapay launched in 2006 and …

  Leading payment processor First Data Corp. reported on Wednesday that its merchant-acquiring operations are enjoying a temporary profit lift and its Star electronic funds transfer network has won more than 20 new contracts from financial institutions as a result of the Durbin Amendment. But whether those new contracts actually …

Having established itself overseas, EMV appears to be coming to the States, with some issuers already pumping out chip cards. Despite high-profile enthusiasts like Wal-Mart and Home Depot, however, few merchants are on board. By Karen Epper Hoffman While the Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip card standard has garnered plenty of headlines …

Typically thought of as a mobile technology for physical merchants, NFC could soon be converting card-not-present transactions into card-present payments for e-commerce retailers. That prospect has important implications for processors and developers. By Bill Pittman Every e-commerce retailer would like to reduce its cost of payments, slash its fraud, and …

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  The data-breach Grinch is stealing Christmas from a big restaurant supplier and Lucky Supermarkets, a major West Coast grocery chain, both of whose payment card acceptance systems were compromised recently by fraudsters using different techniques. The breach at Queens, N.Y.-based Restaurant Depot LLC, which also does business under the …