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 …

As federal regulators increasingly zero in on data breaches, lawyers at a payments conference on Wednesday warned that organizations that suffer breaches are likely to have a tougher time avoiding legal liability in the years ahead. And the PCI Security Standards Council disclosed some of the major changes in its …

• SuperCom Ltd., an Israel-based identity-verification company, bought PowaPOS, the tablet-based point-of-sale unit of Powa Technologies Ltd., a commerce company that floundered. Powa’s two other units, PowaWeb and PowaTag, already have been sold. • American Express Co. reported $176.3 billion in U.S. card-billed business during the first quarter, up 4% from a …

Visa Inc. will be paying more upfront cash to acquire Visa Europe Ltd., and it paid more in client incentives in the quarter ending March 31. But the leading payment card network still managed to turn a tidy profit and saw double-digit increases in U.S. transaction volumes even though volume …

Total charge volume on Discover Financial Services’s networks fell 5% in the first quarter thanks to a 15% drop at the Discover-owned Pulse electronic funds transfer network. But U.S. Bancorp, which owns the big merchant acquirer Elavon, says its merchant-processing revenue increased 4% due to higher transaction volumes and sales …

• 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 …

Despite all the fuss the payments industry is making over mobile wallets, financial institutions have been remarkably low-key. With the notable exception of giants like JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Capital One Financial Corp., nearly all banks and credit unions have ceded the initiative to nonbank players like Apple Inc., …

Online retailer Amazon.com Inc. has taken another step to broadening the reach of its payments service with the debut Friday of an in-store payment service at a New York apparel retailer. This marks the first time Amazon payments has enabled in-store payments with a merchant, Amazon says. Just a couple …

Universal mobile wallets have yet to gain the hearty embrace of merchants and consumers, unlike those serving a solitary merchant. But that will change, forecasts the “Merchant Mobile Wallets: Mobile Payments in Action” report released Wednesday by Mercator Advisory Group Inc. The report from the Maynard, Mass.-based payments consultancy predicts …