Peter Lucas Acquirers routinely lose merchants lured away by offers of lower-cost processing. Result? More acquirers are marketing their own branded POS terminals as a way to boost retention. Ask a merchant acquirer how much it charges a retailer for a point-of-sale terminal and the frequent response is that it’s …

With EMV chip card payments coming and mobile wallets using near-field communication already here, merchant acquirers are beginning to roll out their own hardware and software to handle the new technologies. This week, the big merchant acquirer Chase Paymentech introduced its “Future Proof” point-of-sale terminal and earlier this month, Merchant …

PayPal Inc. on Thursday announced that 15 more retailers had joined its point-of-sale initiative, which means the No. 1 alternative-payments provider is now more than three-quarters of the way toward meeting its stated goal of having 20 national retailers accepting PayPal at physical stores by the end of 2012. PayPal …

For months, the carrier-backed Isis mobile-payments initiative could boast just one accepting merchant, the Utah Transit Authority in Salt Lake City, one of two cities it plans to launch its service in this summer. That changed on Tuesday with the announcement that Isis has signed some 50 retail companies both …

Peter Lucas The creature of the nation’s biggest wireless carriers dumped its payments-network strategy a year ago, and now things are looking up for its mobile wallet. The key difference: an emphasis on offers and rewards. It won’t be long before the eyes of the payment industry focus on Salt …

Among card networks, payment processors, point-of-sale terminal manufacturers, and even issuers, the coming of EMV chip card payments to the U.S. has an aura of inevitability on par with Mitt Romney securing the Republican presidential nomination. But just don’t tell that to one critically important sector in electronic payments: merchants. …

n Square Inc. kept up the pressure on the traditional merchant-acquiring industry on Monday by introducing a souped-up version of its iPad app for brick-and-mortar merchants called Square Register with enhanced business-management functions. Meanwhile, the Isis mobile-payments venture announced it has struck deals with the major U.S. point-of-sale terminal makers …

With both Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. now on the record with plans to encourage the adoption of EMV chip card and mobile payments in the U.S, it seems all but certain that the magnetic-stripe payment card’s days are numbered. In fact, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. already is seeing some EMV …

San Jose, Calif.-based PayPal Inc. later this week will expand its five-store point-of-sale payments pilot with Home Depot to 51 stores, chiefly in the San Francisco Bay area, according to John Donahoe, chief executive of eBay Inc., PayPal’s parent company, and interim president of PayPal. Speaking during a fourth-quarter conference …

  n Ingenico has been piloting PayPal acceptance for six months, Greg Burch, director of business development at the terminal vendor, tells Digital Transactions News. Burch refuses to name the merchant involved in the pilot, but news emerged last week that Home Depot, which uses Ingenico devices, is testing PayPal …