A letter from a major Hypercom Corp. investor to the point-of-sale terminal maker's chief executive advising a stock buyback and referring to a possible sale of the company, made public Friday in a Securities & Exchange Commission filing, has prompted rival VeriFone Holdings Inc. to target Hypercom customers with an …

10 Tipping Points for the Payments Industry Part 9 The very existence of 17,000 financial institutions in this country defies most conventional economic logic, which says efficient markets usually consolidate and concentrate around the biggest and best participants. But in the payments realm, bigger is not always better. That's why …

Leading payment processor First Data Corp. said on Thursday it would gradually exit the money-order and official-check businesses, a move some analysts see as a landmark in the growth of prepaid cards and electronic bill payment by consumers lacking traditional bank accounts. “Money orders are in big trouble,” says research …

CheckFree Corp.'s agreement to buy Dallas-based banking-software vendor Carreker Corp., announced Tuesday, will help extend the bill-payment processor's reach into the business of electronic check image exchange, including the fast-growing remote capture market. It could also position CheckFree to exploit opportunities arising from the possible convergence of the automated clearing …

In the digital world, data storage and security command separate realms?companies that dominate e-storage typically have had little or no presence in the information-security industry, and vice-versa. That's about to change, however, if the nearly $2.1 billion acquisition of prominent data-protection firm RSA Security Inc. by electronic information-storage giant EMC …

Sales of high-tech products such as wireless and Internet Protocol payment terminals helped VeriFone Holdings Inc. post a 21% revenue gain in its first fiscal 2006 quarter, but merchants with limited needs also helped out. In an analysts' conference call late Thursday afternoon, chairman and chief executive Douglas G. Bergeron …

Cardtronics Inc., which operates the largest network of ATMs in the U.S., reported a net loss of $900,000 for the fourth quarter of 2005 along with a full-year drop in net of $3.7 million, to $900,000. The results came on increases of 12.6% and 39.5% in revenue, respectively, for the …

Pay By Touch Solutions, which has spent the past several years building out a point-of-sale network for its biometric-payment service, is now joining the rush to bring electronic payment alternatives to the Internet. Its new Pay By Touch Online product, which it is announcing today, is set to go live …

In another move by a financial-accounting software company into payment processing, Sage Group PLC is acquiring Verus Financial Management Inc., a privately held independent sales organization, for $325 million in cash. Based in the U.K., Sage markets software used by small businesses to manage finances. Nashville, Tenn.-based Verus provides card …

After rapid growth that has propelled it to the top of the ranking of U.S. ATM owners, Houston-based Cardtronics Inc. looks toward another year of major expansion in 2006, company officials tell Digital Transactions. In a story appearing in the January-February 2006 issue of the magazine, the company says it …