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Leading payment card processor First Data Corp. on Tuesday announced it had bought Perka Inc., a startup that provides smart-phone-based loyalty programs for merchants. The Perka buy comes just a few weeks after First Data unveiled a tablet-based point-of-sale system from Clover Network Inc., another startup that it quietly bought …
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An Open Letter: Let’s Put a Stop to Criminal Practices in Our Industry—Now!
(An Open Letter to the Electronic Payments Industry) n On October 16, 2013, I delivered a keynote address to the Strategic Leadership Forum of the Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) on my views of the evolution of the payments industry. At the beginning of this address, I told the audience that …
Read More »The ETA Responds to Heartland’s Bob Carr
In his Oct. 23, 2013, letter to the payments industry (“An Open Letter to the Electronic Payments Industry from Bob Carr”), the chairman and CEO of Heartland Payment Systems provides a compelling historical overview of the challenges faced by our industry some three decades ago. As detailed in his letter, …
Read More »As April Deadline Looms, ATM Experts Fret About Upgrade from Windows XP
Will the world end for ATM owners on April 8? Not likely, but it could become less secure. That is the day Microsoft Corp. ends all support—including security updates—for Windows XP, a common operating system not only for PCs but also for ATMs. That has the ATM industry pondering a …
Read More »Split Bread Takes Home the Bacon by Banning Cash And Using QR Codes
With interchange costs ravaging their balance sheets, most merchants will tell you they’d far rather take cash than cards. Not Split Bread. In fact, the San Francisco sandwich shop doesn’t just discourage cash, it plain won’t accept it. Cards only, please. “Cash is expensive,” David Sliverglide, chief executive of Split …
Read More »Network Divide Over EMV Comes to the Fore as Rumors About a Liability-Shift Delay Surface
By Jim Daly The deep divide within debit networks about bringing Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip cards to the United States was on full display Monday at a conference in which a Visa Inc. executive hinted that Visa might be open to a delay in a major EMV deadline. But an executive …
Read More »Dwolla Aims To Speed Real-Time Payments with Alliance Data Deal for Cardless Credit
In its latest gambit to commercialize instant payment settlement, Dwolla Inc. on Tuesday unveiled a service that will let users pay online merchants using credit rather than their own money. The service, which the Des Moines, Iowa-based alternative-payment processor is calling simply “Credit,” is intended to accelerate progress toward faster …
Read More »PayPal Continues to Grow, Topping $1.6 Billion in Q3 Revenue
PayPal Inc., the financial services arm of marketplace eBay Inc., continues to work on expanding PayPal acceptance beyond e-commerce, and its decision last month to buy Braintree Payment Solutions LLC for $800 million is one part of that effort, eBay executives said Wednesday. EBay has been expanding the number …
Read More »Citing Shady ISO Practices, Heartland’s Carr Predicts Further Crackdowns by the FTC
Merchant processors can expect federal regulators to continue cracking down on their industry, Robert O. Carr, chief executive of Heartland Payment Systems Inc., predicted in a speech Wednesday at an acquiring-industry conference. The reason for stepped-up federal oversight, Carr said, is that independent sales organizations haven’t policed themselves effectively. He …
Read More »Dwolla Ends Support for Virtual Currency Bitcoin
By Kevin Woodward Person-to-person and mobile payments company Dwolla Corp. is ending support for Bitcoin and other virtual currencies effective Oct. 28, Dwolla announced on Friday. Less than 0.1% of Dwolla’s merchants use virtual currencies, Des Moines, Iowa-based Dwolla says in a statement. “Dwolla has notified the few affected merchants …
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