A small, privately held company based in the outskirts of Chicago figures it has the platform on which mobile payments will take off in the U.S., a market that up to now has not been favorable for handheld-based transactions. By the end of the year, C-Sam Inc. plans to have …

JPMorgan Chase & Co. will merge its two acquiring entities, Paymentech L.P. and Chase Merchant Services L.L.C., in a reorganization to be announced soon, sources tell Digital Transactions News. Details of the deal are sketchy at best, but at least one source familiar with the matter says the merger will …

Citigroup Inc.'s decision to bail out of the merchant-acquiring business, which was announced yesterday, could benefit both the banking kingpin and the buyer of the 15,000-location portfolio, processing giant First Data Corp. But Denver-based FDC may emerge as the bigger winner, some observers say, now that Citi has decided to …

A major research firm's estimate this week that fraud losses on debit cards in the U.S. hit an estimated $2.75 billion for the 12 months ending in May might have struck a nerve, especially in the absence of hard data on the problem, but it also has experts raising questions …

The disclosure by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in late July that it plans to charter an industrial bank in Utah to acquire its own payment transactions is creating more questions than answers about current relationships between the world's largest retailer and the payments entities with whom it currently works. Bentonville, Ark.-based …

Despite an apparent willingness by the new chief executive of Visa U.S.A. to meet with merchant representatives on such thorny issues as interchange pricing, some observers say the bank card association's basic position toward the retailer community is unlikely to change. John Philip Coghlan, who took over yesterday as president …

The steady drumbeat of card-data breaches is a major factor causing rising anxiety among consumers who use the Internet for shopping and other financial transactions, the Conference Board reported today. In a quarterly survey of 10,000 households sponsored by the New York-based business organization, 13% of all online consumers say …

The introduction in Canada of a bank-sponsored commercial payment service allowing consumers to buy goods from e-commerce merchants with their PIN debit cards is sparking widespread interest among retailers, according to Moneris Solutions Corp., the first processor to handle transactions for Interac Online. Moneris has been processing Interac Online payments …

The first order of business for the new Washington, D.C.-based merchant group formed earlier this year to lobby for regulation of card-interchange rates is to inform consumers and their representatives about the costs they incur because of interchange, says Mallory Duncan, chairman of the Merchants Payments Coalition. “Consumers don't appreciate …

A proposal to impose an estimated $17 per-transaction fee on banks that enter automated clearing house transactions on behalf of payees for items returned as unauthorized has been rejected by the membership of NACHA, the Herndon, Va.-based rules-setting body for the ACH. According to a notice NACHA sent to its …