The private sector often lives in fear of government regulation, but the payment card industry’s indigenous regulators are piling on new disclosure, monitoring and security requirements for merchant acquirers, panelists said Wednesday at the Northeast Acquirers Association (NEAA) annual conference in Boston. While many of the new rules are meant …

The newness of mobile payments likely was a contributing factor to Amazon.com Inc.’s decision this week to pull the plug on its six-month-old Amazon Wallet. That’s the theory suggested by Brian Kilcourse, managing partner at RSR Research LLC, a Miami-based retail advisory firm. Amazon.com launched Amazon Wallet in July, selling …

American Express Co. reported $182.5 billion in U.S. card-billed business in the fourth quarter, up 7.9% from $169.1 billion a year earlier, and discount-fee revenues increased 1.8% to $4.99 billion from $4.90 billion. The average worldwide discount rate, however, decreased three basis points to 2.45% of the sale. American Express …

Americans love to shop. Whether online, in a small mom-and-pop business, or at a big-box retailer, shoppers turned out in droves this past holiday season. From Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday for example, online sales were up 12.6%–a record week–according to the IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark. For the holiday season overall, …

Last year was a rocky one for eBay Inc., and on Wednesday the company announced it will do some streamlining: In the first quarter, the PayPal Inc. parent company, which reported a $41 million net loss for 2014, will lop off 2,400 jobs across all of its operating units, or …

The United States with its several thousand credit and debit card issuers and more than a dozen payment networks presents a stiff challenge to the card industry as it tries to convert from magnetic-stripe stripe cards to Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip cards, two industry veterans told a group of independent sales …

Price compression in the merchant-acquiring business is nothing new, but research from First Annapolis Consulting shows it may be much more intense than previously thought. “The price point that an acquirer must present to sign a new merchant is falling and falling dramatically in the very segments most acquirers would …

Point-of-sale terminal maker Ingenico Group now owns all of Roam Data, a mobile POS company it first invested in in 2009. France-based Ingenico says the Roam brand will continue to be used on products, but the company name will be wrapped up into Ingenico. “With 100% of Roam, we will …

Apple Inc.’s much anticipated Watch, which includes a near-field communication (NFC) chip for making contactless payments, will be protected by a four-digit PIN, reports Australian Web site CSO. Apple Watch users will need to enter the passcode to use Apple Pay on the watch, the site says. It remains unclear …

Major tech and payments companies are reportedly showing an interest in acquiring Softcard, the troubled mobile-payments joint venture owned by three of the nation’s biggest mobile operators. Google Inc. is in “exclusive” talks with the company and has offered at least $50 million for it, The Wall Street Journal reported …