In its latest move toward becoming a force in electronic payments, social network Twitter Inc. reported Monday that it is starting a test allowing members to make purchases via tweets from 28 partners that include merchants, rock bands and non-profits. “For a small percentage of U.S. users (that will grow …

Vantiv-Mercury: Bad News for ISOs? Mercury Payment Systems LLC made its reputation as the leader in a rising niche of independent sales organizations that offer payment processing as part of business-management applications sold to merchants by software developers, dealers, and value-added resellers. In contrast, many ISOs still peddle straight payments …

Vantiv Inc.’s deal to acquire Mercury Payment Systems LLC was noteworthy for its size—the deal carried a $1.65 billion price tag—but it was also exemplary of a key industry transformation from distribution-centric to product-centric acquiring. For decades, the merchant-acquiring industry has revolved around selling the services of barely differentiated payment …

Venture-capital and private-equity investors are on pace to meet or exceed the $753 million they infused into the payments industry in 2011, the most since the $1.4 billion they invested in payments in 2001. Through the first three quarters of 2012, venture-capital and private-equity investors pumped $711 million into startup …

Elo Touch Solutions Inc. launched its Elo Pay M100 POS tablet, a mobile point-of-sale Android payments device aimed at restaurants as well as the general merchant market. Accessories include separate readers for mag-stripes and fingerprints. Kuvasz Solutions, a Chile-based payments services company formed in 2008, said it is expanding to the …

TrustCommerce says the first client to use its Cloud Payments integration with Epic Systems Corp.’s health-care software for card-present payments is now live. Chicago-based TrustCommerce says The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center is the first to use its Cloud Payments integration. Cloud Payments uses Android-based point-of-sale devices from PAX …

Almost two-thirds of U.S. consumers prefer to pay bills manually rather than through automated services, according to a survey by payments platform MX Technologies Inc. The online research embraced 1,059 adults and was conducted during the first quarter. Embedded payments startup Forward closed a $16 million seed financing round led by Commerce Ventures, Elefund, …

Tap-to-pay technology for ordinary smart phones is a relatively recent development, but payments companies aren’t wasting any time offering it as it spreads into new countries. The latest example comes from Canada, which became the latest market expansion Thursday for Apple Inc.’s tap to pay on iPhone technology. The first …

Quickcharge, a division of Transact Campus Inc., completed an integration of Amazon.com Inc.’s Just Walk Technology at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tampa that enables employees to use their badges to pay for food and beverages. Payments processor Elavon said it is expanding a partnership in Europe with commerce-technology platform FreedomPay to include …

Block Inc.’s Square point-of-sale unit announced offline-payments capability is now available on all Square devices in all geographies around the world. The move covers Square Stand and Square Reader for contactless and chip, in addition to Square Register and Square Terminal. Square Reader for magstripe, the original Square device, has been covered …