First Data Corp. late on Monday named Ed Labry, president of the big processor’s North American unit, as interim chief executive officer to  replace current chief executive Jonathan J. Judge, who is retiring early for health reasons. The announcement came less than a day before First Data announced mixed fourth-quarter …

  Intuit Inc. on Monday acquired the assets of Palo Alto, Calif.-based Payvment Inc., a 3-year-old vendor of shopping-cart and payment tools for merchants operating on social networks. Terms of the deal, which capped a series of developments that for some observers cast doubt on the market for so-called social …

The surcharging provisions of the credit card interchange settlement announced last July will take effect on Sunday, but observers expect few merchants will take advantage of their new-found freedom to add a surcharge to Visa and MasterCard credit card sales. “I know of nobody” who plans to surcharge, says Mitch …

n Passbook? The topic of Apple Inc.’s loyalty application didn’t come up Wednesday afternoon when the leading Silicon Valley tech company’s top brass discussed their latest quarterly results, which stock analysts found disappointing. But some smart-phone industry observers see evidence that Apple is laying the groundwork for a full-fledged mobile-payments …

A buoyant John Donahoe, chief executive of eBay Inc., said on Wednesday that PayPal Inc.’s launch on the Discover Network is “on track” to begin toward the end of the second quarter. A key part of eBay unit PayPal’s strategy to bring its payment service to the physical point of …

Prepaid card program manager Green Dot Corp. launched its GoBank mobile-banking application Tuesday. The app gives struggling Green Dot a powerful weapon to fight competitors for underbanked consumers or those simply dissatisfied with mainstream banks, including American Express Co., issuer of the new, low-fee Bluebird prepaid card account for customers …

Atlanta-based InComm, a major provider of plastic gift card programs, will be gaining a bigger presence in the growing digital card market through its acquisition announced on Wednesday of Portland, Ore.-based Giftango Corp. Although both companies are involved in managing plastic and digital gift card programs for retailers, InComm had …

Have the Durbin Amendment’s interchange restrictions cut into debit card revenue at the nation’s smaller financial institutions? In the wake of a spin war touched off on Monday by a merchant-controlled lobbying group, the answer appears to be: It depends on whom you ask. Monday morning, the Washington, D.C.-based Merchants …

While many brick-and-mortar retailers were disappointed with sales for the 2012 holiday season, online merchants posted respectable gains in the mid-teens, according to new reports. Internet usage tracker comScore Inc. reported on Thursday that e-commerce volume hit $42.3 billion in the November-December holiday shopping season, up 13.8% over $37.2 billion …

Spot Credit And Mobile Fuel Online Sales There’s been an awful lot of buzz about mobile payments the past few years, and now the payment method is starting to register. Indeed, 2012 marked the first time mobile-originated transactions accounted for a meaningful share of online purchase volume, says Beth Robertson, …