Heartland Payment Systems Inc. on Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit against Mercury Payment Systems LLC alleging deceptive pricing by Mercury allowed it to lure scores of merchants away from Heartland and attract prospects to Mercury that had been weighing the two companies for payment-processing services. Heartland’s suit, filed in U.S. …

Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc., and their Canadian credit card issuers dodged a legal bullet Tuesday when Canada’s Competition Tribunal refused to quash network rules designed to protect cards from being undercut by merchants seeking lower-cost payment forms. Instead, the tribunal suggested that changing the law was the way for merchants …

Steve Mott Financial institutions and retailers are natural allies—not enemies—and nowhere can this alliance yield more profitable results than in mobile payments. Here are five problems the two sides must solve to make the most of this great mobile alliance—along with five proposed solutions.(Editor’s note: This article is the second …

The card networks, major U.S. banks, and U.S. merchants reached a $7-billion-plus settlement late on Friday, capping a seven-year battle over credit card interchange and network acceptance rules. If approved by the court, the settlement will be the largest such agreement ever in an antitrust case. Under the terms of …

  n Merchant processors, banks, and independent sales organizations that process transactions for merchants with annual sales of less than $10 million—the vast majority of U.S. retailers—have added on a wide array of fees in recent years for items ranging from statements to monthly minimums to chargeback processing and authorizations. …

Acquiring Next in Merchants’ Cross-Hairs Lauri Giesen Fresh from their success in winning regulation of debit card interchange, merchants smell bank blood in the water. That means banks and the networks had better act fast if they want to protect credit card interchange. Now that retailers have gotten Congress to …

Coming off a tough year in 2009, independent sales organizations and other acquirers rank merchant attrition and shrinking margins as their top challenges as they look ahead to next year. Acquirers also rank mobile-related products as their biggest emerging market for next year, while they plan to invest more in …

With merchants looking to cut processing costs and clarify the pricing they pay for card acceptance, a Web site that lets merchants take bids from acquirers is generating between eight and 10 deals a month for at least some of the qualified processors using it. Chicago-based Transparent Financial Services LLC, …

American Express Co. and Discover Financial Services both report that enlisting bank card acquirers to grow their merchant networks is paying off. Until their initiatives started, merchants had to deal with separate customer-service staff and received separate statements for their respective AmEx or Discover accounts. That made taking brands more …

Pricing is by far the biggest reason merchants cite when asked why they left their previous payment card processor, but there's more to the attrition story than meets the eye, according to a new study by Aite Group LLC. “Pricing is only the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back,” …