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 …

In testimony today before a committee of the Australian house of representatives, the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia stoutly defended the RBA's action last year to regulate credit card interchange rates in that country, claiming it has saved merchants some $447 million (US) in the past year and …

At a time when new ATM deployment has been slow, one independent deployer of the machines has found a big payoff from a novel approach to cobranding ATMs with banks. Since announcing its cobranding deal about 18 months ago, Houston-based Cardtronics Inc. has been able to get more than 800 …

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 …

Fiserv Inc. is buying electronic bill-payment processor BillMatrix Corp. in a $350-million deal expected to close by Sept. 30. Dallas-based BillMatrix processes payments on cards and through the automated clearing house for more than 120 clients, among them utilities, insurers, lenders, and phone carriers. It is a pioneer in the …

Though they are not named as defendants in the antitrust case filed today by Kroger Co. and six other retail chains against Visa International and Visa U.S.A., MasterCard International and individual member banks of both bank card networks could find themselves named in separate actions later, according to one of …

An Internet-based payments network that originated in Europe is targeting the increasingly competitive U.S. micropayments market, seeking major-brand U.S. merchants and looking for licensees here for its software. Webpay Inc., a unit of Switzerland-based Webpay International, set up shop in Manhattan 11 months ago and so far has recruited 30 …

BitPass Inc., which has relied on prepaid accounts since it began processing micropayments less than two years ago, is exploring a number of new payment options, including one that would allow users to pay spontaneously rather than from previously funded Bitpass accounts. In an e-mail survey it distributed last week, …

PIN-less debit may be gathering momentum for online bill payments, but not all potential billers are convinced they should offer the payment method, which depends on the same networks that switch PIN-based debit transactions at the point of sale and at ATMs. Because it carries lower acceptance costs than credit …