CPI Card Group is working with digital issuance and wallet platform provider Sequent Software Inc. on CPIMobile, a service to deliver secure digital credentials to near-field communication (NFC)-compatible smart phones. CPI announced Monday. NFC is a two-way protocol that enables mobile devices to share data in a secure environment. CPIMobile …

With financial institutions lending less to small businesses, new, technology-based companies are moving into merchant lending to fill the void. This is a market typically served by so-called merchant cash-advance firms, companies that lend money in the form of advances against a merchant’s expected credit card volume. In many cases, …

Payments entrepreneurs and veterans alike view Bitcoin and other so-called cryptocurrencies as the new land of opportunity, but with the territory comes a considerable amount of legal risk. Federal authorities busted the Liberty Reserve and Silk Road ventures, the latter because it attempted to hide illegal activity by requiring customers …

The Gimlet Eye The rapid emergence of mobile devices and mobile apps in retail settings has led some observers of the payments business to predict the near-term demise of the humble point-of-sale payments terminal. We demur, for reasons we lay out in our story “POS Terminals Have a Future, And …

Bank of America Corp. last month began issuing debit cards that adhere to the Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip card standard, thus becoming the first mega-bank to begin a wide-scale EMV conversion. Cards for existing customers will be issued as old cards expire or are replaced for other reasons. The U.S. payment …

One implication of the breakup of PayPal Inc. and its parent company eBay Inc., announced by eBay at the end of September and planned for next year, is that eBay will likely be free to add a slew of alternative-payment methods for sellers to accept on its online marketplaces. For …

Security Notes If Apple Inc. attached a rolled-up dog leash to its iPhone 6, a majority of dog owners would abandon their old leash and phone-walk their dog—just because it is Apple. So no matter what pundits write about the new Apple Pay mobile-payments service, it will fly high. Conceptually …

Payments 3.0 The 30% annual growth of mobile point of sale (mPOS) over the past three years (footnote 1)  indicates that a new innovation is being rapidly adopted. The number of different companies providing mPOS devices, currently upwards of 200, is extraordinary even by the norms of the mobile phone-based …

  Mobile POS services, integrated software, and migration to the EMV standard are all influencing sales of terminals. Cast aside any preconceptions about the imminent demise of the standalone point-of-sale terminal. That venerable device, which symbolizes payments in the minds of consumers—and recurring revenue for payments professionals—is not going away …

Five leading U.S. merchant processors have spent more than $5.4 billion buying other companies in the past two years. New tech and new channels have a lot to do with the shopping frenzy. Time was, when a merchant processor set out on the acquisition trail, it usually was hunting for …