A lull in the longstanding war of words between merchants and the global payment card networks came to an end with the creation Thursday of the Secure Payments Partnership, an advocacy group of retailers and PIN-debit networks. On Friday, the Electronic Payments Coalition, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying organization led primarily …

Several national merchant trade groups and PIN-debit networks have founded an advocacy group meant to give them a bigger role in the development of electronic-payment security standards. Founding members of the new Secure Payments Partnership include the Food Marketing Institute, National Retail Federation, National Association of Convenience Stores, National Grocers …

In the United States, at least, mobile wallets and contactless transactions in general have been a hard sell, but now research results issued Wednesday indicate so-called frictionless payments may themselves hold less attraction for consumers than many had thought. Apps that allow users to set up a payment method and …

Merchants, especially those reliant on point-of-sale software, continue to find themselves catching up to consumers when it comes to EMV adoption. But Rent Centric Inc., developer of browser-based software for the auto-rental industry, is the latest to make EMV acceptance available to its clients. Toronto-based Rent Centric says it now …

Harbortouch, a unit of Shift4 Payments, debuted Checkout, a point-of-sale system with features to aid retailers, including inventory tracking and management, time-clock and scheduling tools, and text and email marketing. Checkout is aimed at independent and small-chain retail stores, the company said. The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating alleged insider …

To explain today’s mergers and acquisitions in merchant acquiring, mix a hefty dose of technology and a dash of foreign spices with traditional flavors like greater scale. And don’t forget a little fear. For years, greater scale seemed to be the big driver of mergers and acquisitions in the merchant-acquiring …

Many years ago, in a press interview, I commented on the importance to banks and payment companies of understanding the then new phenomenon of Facebook. At the time, it looked as if social media might become a major platform for payments. It turns out that mobile media has taken that …

Parking management and payments provider ParkWhiz acquired CodiPark, an Israeli firm whose app allows users to pay for a parking space when they drive up to a garage, a function that adds to ParkWhiz’s pre-booking app. Terms were not announced. POSaBIT Ltd., a financial-technology company specializing in digital currency at the …

Ever since Apple Pay launched in the fall of 2014, observers have questioned why the mobile-payment service hasn’t caught on with consumers. One possibility is that the service’s contactless capability remains foreign to most consumers. That could change next month, when Apple Inc. is expected to widen the range of …

Sarah Adams, VP Product, Card Present at Paysafe In an article posted earlier this week, my colleague Todd Linden, CEO of Payment Processing North America, looked at how the US payments landscape is changing. He also explored how Independent Sales Organizations (ISOs) and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) were evolving in …