Peter Lucas Despite backing from some of the country’s biggest carriers and tech firms, NFC-based mobile wallets are struggling to win acceptance with merchants and consumers alike. Does the solution lie in the cloud? It’s been tough sledding of late for digital wallets based on near-field communication (NFC), the contactless …

Lauri Giesen The big retail growth is online and in mobile commerce, but ISOs looking to crack this market must be willing to clear some high technological and operational hurdles. During times of overall sluggish retail sales and low profit margins on basic payment services, many independent sales organizations might …

Jim Daly Can the old Hypercom Corp.’s reborn U.S. operation make a go of it with a new name, new owner, and new products in a fast-changing POS terminal market? After 15 months in the Makeover Department, the U.S. operation of the former Hypercom Corp., now known as Equinox Payments …

From continued interchange challenges to pokey transactions to uppity merchants, the payments business has a full agenda of pesky problems. Here’s our look at the latest crop, ranked in order of gnarliness. By John Stewart and Jim Daly If it is true that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, …

Karen Epper Hoffman Mobile-commerce developers are finding more ways for shoppers to make purchases without ever leaving the application. But will this approach outpace the mobile Web? As smart phones and tablet computers grow in processing power, screen clarity, and ubiquity, the question of whether people will buy goods and …

In a move that will greatly expand its business in card-not-present transaction processing, merchant processor Vantiv Inc. announced on Wednesday that it has agreed to acquire Lowell, Mass.-based Litle & Co. for $361 million in cash. The transaction is expected to close later this year and will result in 11-year-old …

A 13-cent fee increase from Parkmobile USA Inc., a specialty payments processor for parking providers and municipalities, drew heavy fire last week from U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin, chief sponsor of the Durbin Amendment in 2010’s Dodd-Frank Act that imposed price controls on most debit card transactions. The brouhaha is the …

The judge overseeing the mammoth litigation involving credit card interchange said on Wednesday the controversial proposed settlement appears to meet the requirements for preliminary approval. Judge John Gleeson, however, also said he would hear merchants’ objections to the settlement struck by lawyers for the merchant plaintiffs and the payment card …

Calling it a “sophisticated criminal effort,” Barnes & Noble Inc. on Wednesday reported tampering occurred on PIN pads at 63 of its stores in nine states. The company on Sept. 14 disconnected every PIN pad in all of its nearly 700 stores but indicated that in addition to personal identification …

Google Inc. will launch yet another new version of its mobile wallet in about a month, Google’s top executive for the product said on Monday. The latest version, which Osama Bedier, vice president of  Google Wallet and payments, referred to as “the 2.0 version” of the product, comes just short …