The market for card-based vending machine purchases has hit some turbulence over the past year, but new competitor Spindle Inc. says the niche still has plenty of long-term opportunities. “I’m not at this point so worried about being different as adding competition,” says Bill Clark, president of Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Spindle. …

A little-noticed new Georgia law creates a new type of bank dedicated solely to merchant acquiring that could radically transform how the acquiring business works in the U.S. Enacted at the behest of Global Payments Inc., the big Atlanta-based merchant processor, the law enables a non-bank acquirer to own its …

Tougher restrictions by banks are creating a business opportunity for Global eTelecom, a Fort Walton Beach, Fla.-based processor of automated clearing house transactions. While the 14-year-old company has traditionally relied on reseller agreements with independent sales organizations for new business, it’s now also pursuing deals to handle volume for other, …

EBay Inc.’s top brass made it clear on Wednesday that mobile technology is dominating strategic thinking at PayPal Inc., even though it does not yet account for a significant share of transaction volume for the eBay unit. Addressing stock analysts during eBay’s quarterly earnings call, eBay chief executive John Donahoe …

  Barcodes for payments by smart phone have a proven track record and a diverse group of supporters, but many in the payments industry regard them as merely a way station on the road NFC-based mobile payments. Here’s where they stand today. By Jim Daly Sure, the techies and lots …

The Western Union Co. took a decisive step into digital payments and online shopping with the launch last week of the WU Pay platform. The platform allows shoppers in the U.S. to pay for online purchases from their existing bank accounts or in cash at Western Union agent locations. Customers …

British mobile-banking and payments technology provider Monitise plc announced a $173 million deal Monday to buy San Rafael, Calif.-based Clairmail Inc. that will give Monitise a much bigger U.S. presence in mobile financial services and further consolidate a market nurtured by startups but feeling the increasing presence of international card …

Vantiv Inc. began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday with the symbol VNTV, having priced its shares late on Wednesday at $17, the mid-point of its estimated opening range. The Cincinnati-based payment processor saw its initial offering of 29.4 million shares raise just shy of $500 million. …

Payments fraud against companies moderated during 2011, with the share of companies experiencing payments fraud falling to the lowest level since 2004, according to the Association for Financial Professionals’ latest annual study of corporate payments fraud. Nevertheless, the level of fraud remained elevated, with the majority of organizations reporting attempted …

New data from automated clearing house governing body NACHA reaffirm the continuing gains of electronic bill payment and the long-term decline in consumer check writing to pay bills. NACHA’s report for 2011’s fourth quarter says that transactions under the so-called WEB standard entry class code for Internet bill-payment debits grew …