• Global Payments Inc.’s $4.3 billion acquisition of processor Heartland Payment Systems Inc. closed Monday, Global Payments said. The deal, announced in December, gives the combined company more than 8,500 employees and provides services to almost 2.5 million merchants around the world. • Processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) renewed …

First Data Corp. is taking its Clover brand, known until now as a mobile point-of-sale service, to the Web with a launch May 3 of the Clover Online Store. Announced Wednesday at Transact16, the Electronic Transactions Association’s annual conference in Las Vegas, the service enables merchants to set up an …

• The Merchants Payments Coalition, a lobbying group for merchants on payment issues, attacked a Harvard University research paper as “just plain wrong” after the paper argued the debit-interchange caps in the Durbin Amendment to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act drove up banking costs for consumers. • Terminal maker Ingenico Group …

Many consumers and merchants adjusting to using newly-issued EMV credit and debit cards may undergo a perception versus reality check as Visa Inc. prepares to debut its Quick Chip for EMV program. Visa also provided updated chip card issuing and acceptance data. Announced Tuesday, the program enables consumers to remove …

Jolted by some shocking failures over the past several months, the mobile-acceptance market is fast shedding its early euphoria. What are the prospects for mPOS now? As boardroom dramas go, it seldom gets more compelling than this. In February, news suddenly emerged that Powa Technologies Ltd., a high-flying London-based startup …

  Semi-integrated POS systems are quickly becoming a preferred option for acquirers and merchants. Among the many outcomes stemming from the U.S. payment card industry’s burgeoning migration to the EMV chip card standard is the rise of semi-integrated point-of-sale systems, which enable merchants to use sophisticated POS software without worrying …

Remember when NFC was a dead letter in payments? Well, it’s undergoing quite a resurrection, thanks to EMV and mobile wallets like Apple Pay. When Apple Pay burst upon the payments scene 18 months ago, the way it allowed iPhones to connect instantly with point-of-sale terminals seemed like something fresh …

Some important payments developments are asserting themselves this year. Don’t risk being left behind. The pace of change in the payments industry is normally fast. But the perfect storm of the U.S. EMV migration plus the mobile-wallet revolution has accelerated that pace to blistering. It’s an exciting time, but also …

Apple Pay pulled up to the fuel pump at ExxonMobil Corp. gas stations with the release last month of Speedpass+, an iOS app that enables consumers to use Apple Inc.’s mobile-payment service to pay within the app for fuel at the pump. The app is available for Android devices. It …

By John Stewart   These days, the airline and air-travel industry finds itself squeezed between two imperatives that have come into sharp focus in recent months. With high average tickets, airlines must guard against fraud at a time when the spread of EMV chip cards is pushing more criminals into …