By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews Best known nationally for its powerful basketball teams, the University of Connecticut is about to make a name for itself in cybersecurity. UConn’s School of Engineering and retail credit provider Synchrony Financial on Tuesday announced that Synchrony is providing $2.2 million to fund a new

• Merchant processor Payroc LLC announced it has acquired payment gateway The iTransact Group. Terms were not disclosed. Besides the gateway, the deal brings 6,000 merchants with $1.3 billion in annual volume to Payroc, along with mobile point-of-sale technology and a payment-facilitator platform. • Payments provider Intrix Technology Inc. purchased the business …

Kohl’s Corp. joins the ranks of retailers with their own mobile-wallet services with the launch this week of Kohl’s Pay. Menomonee Falls, Wis.-based Kohl’s said the barcode mobile-payment service exclusively uses the private-label Kohl’s Charge card as the payment mechanism in more than 1,100 Kohl’s stores. To use Kohl’s Pay, …

By Peter Lucas@DTPaymentNews Payment processor Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) is rolling out Premium Payback, a rewards-redemption application that allows consumers to cash out rewards earned on credit and debit cards at the point of sale through participating merchants. FIS, which piloted Premium Payback at more than 7,000 BP …

• A federal judge in California has allowed an antitrust case to move forward against American Express Co., Discover Financial Services, MasterCard Inc., and Visa Inc. The case was filed in March by Florida merchants as a class-action suit alleging the networks had conspired to shift chargeback liability from banks …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews The first business day of 2016’s fourth quarter produced several announcements about payments-industry acquisitions. In the biggest, globe-trotting ATM network operator Cardtronics plc will gain a toehold in the Asia-Pacific region by acquiring Canadian ATM firm DirectCash Payments Inc. (DCPayments) for $460 million. Meanwhile, Meta Financial Group …

• ATM network operator Cardtronics plc announced it plans to buy Canadian ATM operator DirectCash Payments Inc. (DCPayments) for $460 million; DC Payments operates 25,000 ATMs and will give Cardtronics its first presence in Australia and New Zealand and expand its operations in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Mexico. • …

Now that merchants have had their EMV D-Day, it’s the turn of ATM owners and petroleum marketers. The compliance picture isn’t pretty. Here’s why, and what ATM deployers, c-stores, and others can do about it. Another deadline for the great EMV migration has arrived. A year ago, U.S. merchants were …

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 …

There have been some successes, but loyalty programs tied into mobile-payment systems are still few and far between. What will it take to strengthen the relationship? When you think of loyalty programs seamlessly integrated with mobile payments, only two examples loom large in the minds of the public and many …